African Tales

by Harold Scheub

Overview

The latest work from Harold Scheub, one of the world's leading scholars of African folktales, is the broadest collection yet assembled with tales from the entire continent of Africa, north to south. It brings together mythic, fantastic, and coming-of-age tales, some transcribed more than a hundred years ago, others dating to modern-day Africa. Scheub includes the work of storytellers from major African language groups, as well as many storytellers whose work is not often heard outside of Africa. This anthology offers a classroom-ready collection that should appeal to any scholar of African literature and culture. Realizing that these tales are part of a dying art, Scheub writes for the inner ear in everyone, bringing an oral tradition to life in written form.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299209445
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	03/09/2005
Edition description:	1
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Harold Scheub is the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of many books, including Story, The Poem in the Story, The Tongue Is Fire: South African Storytellers and Apartheid, and The World and the Word, all published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Editorial Reviews

"Harold Scheub's masterful African Tales brings together imaginative folktales from almost every African country that together convey a powerful mixture of tricksters, lovers, villains, monsters, and heroes that captivates the reader and leads to a greater appreciation of the human condition."—Elizabeth C. Fine, Virginia Tech

"Enchanting, frightening, funny, ethical, historical, wise—these stories from around the continent tell of every circumstance of life.  I didn't want to put the book down."—Eileen Julien, Indiana University, Bloomington

From the Publisher