About the Playwright:

Bole Butake was a prominent Anglophone Cameroonian playwright, poet, theatre director and literary scholar. He was born in 1947 at Nkor in the North-West Region of Cameroon and died in 2016. He studied at Sacred Heart College, Mankon, and later at the University of Yaoundé. He obtained a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Leeds in England and subsequently earned a PhD at the University of Yaoundé. He taught at the University of Yaoundé and became associated with the teaching and development of African literature and theatre. Among his important dramatic works are: The Rape of Michelle, Lake God, The Survivors, And Palm-Wine Will Flow, Dance of the Vampires, Family Saga and Betrothal Without Libation. Butake’s drama frequently addresses questions of power, leadership, oppression, corruption, justice, human rights, tradition and social responsibility. Butake is undeniably one of those Anglophone Cameroonian dramatists whose works frequently engage with social, political and cultural questions.

And Palm-Wine Will Flow, was published in 1990 by Editions SOPECAM. The play is a relatively short drama and was written as one movement. The choice of a fictional traditional society allows Butake to present serious questions about leadership, justice and society through a setting that is recognisably African and particularly suggestive of the traditional societies of Cameroon.