Grove Atlantic re-issues The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the two most well-known novels by Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola. Published over 70 years ago, these works are foundational to 20th century literature and have long been celebrated for their surreal, genre-bending storytelling.

This new 2025 release comes more than a decade after Faber & Faber’s 2014 UK reissue and feels especially timely given the global rise in interest in fantasy and speculative fiction. The books have been issued as a pair under Grove’s Black Cat imprint and feature redesigned covers and new introductions (The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Wole Soyinka, and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Kaveh Akbar) that reframe Tutuola’s work for a new generation of readers.

Grove Atlantic’s Black Cat imprint is known for publishing fiction that pushes the boundaries of literary form. It features works like Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, and Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker-winning Girl, Woman, Other. This re-issues show Tutuola’s work shining among contemporary experimental literature and, thus, far from being a relic.

In The Palm-Wine Drinkard, a man sets off on a strange, mythic quest to retrieve his dead tapster from the afterlife. In My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a boy fleeing slave raiders is trapped in a spirit world. Both novels draw deeply from Yoruba cosmology and oral storytelling traditions. Tutuola’ does fantasy like no other, and we are excited that readers get to experience the brilliance of his world-building.

With contemporary African fantasy on the rise, this rerelease is a chance to revisit, or discover, one of the genre’s earliest innovators.

See buying options here and here.