African Folktales at Internet Archive: Zulu Fireside Tales

The focus this week is stories from southern Africa, so I wanted to feature one more book by Phyllis Savory, a South African author who wrote many collections of folktales retold. Here's her Zulu Fireside Tales, which is just a click away at the Internet Archive.

This collection was published in 1961, and as Savory explains in the introduction, she had met a Zulu girl named Duduzele who told her some Zulu stories, and then Savory started working with Duduzele's mother to learn more stories. As is typical (and unfortunate), Savory does not credit the mother by name, and instead has taken the stories and published them under her own name. But at least she did record the name of the girl whose stories provided the beginning of this book.

As often there are songs that form part of the stories, and the words to the songs are provided in both Zulu and English:

The illustrations are by Sylvia Baxter, and include both half-page and full-page illustrations, like these:

The other books by Savory that I've blogged about previously are: Congo Fireside Tales, Bantu Folk Tales from Southern Africa, and Lion Outwitted by Hare and Other African Tales.

So, the book of Zulu stories and all these other books by Phyllis Savory await you at Internet Archive, just a click away!

Zulu Fireside Tales

by Phyllis Savory