Beschrijving

This volume is a rich anthology of folklore from the Bantu-speaking peoples of central and southern Africa: it gathers myths, legends, sagas, fables and true-stories collected across groups such as the Zulu, Ronga, Kongo, Kimbundu, Luba-Kasai and others. The tales range from creation myths (“The Mother of the Animals”, “The Creation Myth of the Bakuba”) to spirits and sorcery (“How One Becomes a Sorcerer”, “The Were-Leopard or How to Become a Wild Beast”), to animal fables, moral-proverb tales and epic sagas. Through such diverse genres we get a vivid sense of world-making, moral codes, community values, and the role of animals and the supernatural in Bantu cultures. In addition to the tales themselves, the book offers the reader insight into the cultural context: the settings of the story-communities, the social roles of hunters, river-gods, witch-children, animals, tricksters and witch-doctors; and it emphasises how myth and folklore function both as entertainment and as vehicles of communal identity, ethical instruction and cosmological understanding. The selection and translation aim to preserve the flavour of the original traditions while making them accessible to English-speaking readers.