Tricksters: Watermelons, Walnuts, and the Wisdom of Allah

So far in this "week of Nasruddin" books, I have featured books which tell the Nasruddin stories in very short forms, something more like a joke than actual story. The stories in today's book are told in a more fully-fledged "storyful" approach, actual folktales rather than jokes or tiny parables: Watermelons, Walnuts, and the Wisdom of Allah, and Other Tales of the Hoca by Barbara K. Walker.

The book contains 18 stories about Nasruddin, and the illustrations are by Harold Berson. Here, for example, is the famous story of Nasruddin in the melon patch (one of my favorites!):

Barbara Walker was a folklorist who specialized in the storytelling traditions of Turkey. You can also find her Treasury of Turkish Folktales for Children at the Internet Archive, along with other books. You will find some Nasruddin stories here, along with all sorts of other folktale genres!

Walker also worked on African folktales, especially the folktales of Nigeria; readers of this blog might remember this earlier post about her two books of Nigerian folktales:

Nigerian Folk Tales

The Dancing Palm Tree and Other Nigerian Folktales

Walker is a great example of someone with an academic interest in folktales (she was the curator of the Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University) who also knew how to write for a general audience, and her Nasruddin book is a great way to get introduced to the tradition of Nasruddin stories in Turkey, as also in the book from yesterday by Alpay Kabacali. Turkey is the traditional home of Nasruddin, so it's a perfect place in which to start exploring his stories!

Watermelons, Walnuts, and the Wisdom of Allah,

and Other Tales of the Hoca

by Barbara K. Walker