African Folktales at Internet Archive: Traditional Fables from Zimbabwe

To wrap up this week of stories from southern Africa (see this week's posts on one page), I wanted to make sure to include this lovely book of stories from Zimbabwe: The Broken Promise and Other Traditional Fables from Zimbabwe by Norman Atkinson, just a click away at the Internet Archive.

Atkinson focused mostly on Shona stories, but there are also Ndebele and Venda stories as you can see in this screenshot of the table of contents:

The author was an educator affiliated with the University of Zimbabwe (formerly the University of Rhodesia). He was born in Ireland in 1932, went to university in Ireland and England, and then came to Zimbabwe in 1970 where he spent the rest of his life; he died in 2014. 

The book also includes some lovely illustration by Tali Geva-Bradley. For example, here is the story of the race between the Tortoise and the Hare. The African trickster Tortoise does not win by going "slow and steady" as in Aesop; instead, he recruits other Tortoises to impersonate him along they way, and Hare doesn't know the difference, as you can see suggested in the illustration here:

For the same story of Rabbit and Tortoise told by an African American storyteller, see "Slow Train to Arkansas" in Harold Courlander's Terrapin's Pot of Sense, also just a click away at the Internet Archive:

I'll write up a blog post about that book too when I move on to African American story collections... but there are still lots more African story collections to write about. :-)

Teachers will appreciate the educational perspective of Atkinson's book; each story has discussion questions and and suggested learning activities that you will find in the back of the book. 

In short: highly recommended!

The Broken Promise

and Other Traditional Fables from Zimbabwe

by Norman Atkinson