A seven-year-old boy flees a slave raid on his Nigerian village and, separated from his brother, wanders into a wilderness haunted by grotesque, magical beings. Tutuola's 1954 novel follows his strange, folklore-steeped initiation into the bush of ghosts.
In the realm of spirits, belonging is ranked: the ordinary dead count as intruders, yet they are tolerated more than a living human who wanders in. Being an outsider comes in degrees, and a newcomer from the wrong world ranks at the very bottom.
Coming of age here is not a chosen quest but a series of things done to a lost child, who is turned into an animal, a blood-covered idol and food for giant spiders. The self is formed by enduring repeated remakings, not by pursuing a goal.
A child who runs from slavers and war escapes into a spirit world, only to be captured again and again by its creatures. Escaping one kind of bondage does not end bondage; it can hand the runaway over to a new and stranger chain of captors.
Traditional folklore does not freeze in place; it takes in whatever arrives, from Christian beliefs to machines, so a ghost can have hundreds of heads and televisions for hands. Yet the same contact shows the danger of the newcomer's religion pushing to erase local culture and impose conformity.