TUTUOLA, Amos.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. First edition, association copy, with the bookplate of Scottish author and social activist Naomi Mitchison, and a Christmas card signed by the author pasted in at the front. Mitchison admired Tutuola as a "curious genius" who "attacks his readers and hits his mark" (Mitchison, p. 30). Mitchison (1897-1999) was active in socialist circles from the 1930s and later became a supporter of Scottish nationalism. She travelled widely and was particularly drawn to west African countries, becoming a supporter of their political and cultural autonomy. In 1957, she covered independence celebrations in Ghana for the Manchester Guardian.My Life in the Bush of Ghosts followed Tutuola's first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, from which he had gained international recognition. His second full-length work "uniquely synthesizes the Yoruba culture he was born into with that of the British and Christian colonialism under which he matured into adulthood", creating "a striking work of syncretism, recontextualizing previously unrecorded west African mythology by imbuing it with symbols of what was at the time a new global modernity" (Wolfson). In 1981, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and Brian Eno created a collaborative album named after the book.

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