My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (novel)

"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" is a novel by Nigerian author Amos Tutuola, and the namesake of the Brian Eno and David Byrne album of the same name.Tutuola's second novel, the story follows an unnamed male protagonist going through many surreal experiences.

Critical Reception

Published by Faber and Faber 1954, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" received and exceptionally warm reaction in London. Kingsley Amis wrote in The Spectator that "there is no doubt of the size of Mr. Tutuola's talent, which makes the average 'modern novel' look jejune and vapid."

In 2020, Elijah Wolfson writing for Time Magazine said that in the novel Tutuola "recontextualiz[ed] previously unrecorded west African mythology by imbuing it with symbols of what was at the time a new global modernity. Consider, for example, one of the key figures of the novel: the “television-handed ghostess,” [...] opening her hands and revealing TV screens on her palms showing footage of the narrator’s family and home village."

Influence on David Byrne and Brian Eno

In a 2006 essay that accompanied the re-release of the album, Byrne said that during the recording sessions "both Brian and I had begun reading John Chernoff’s “African Rhythm and African Sensibility” and Robert Farris Thompson’s “African Art In Motion.” This was part of a larger "African obsession" in which that the two became aware of Tutuola, and read his first novel "The Palm Wine Drunkard." As for picking the title of Tutuala's second novel, Byrne wrote "We hadn’t yet read this particular book [...] but the title was perfect, so that became the name of the record."