King's Drum and Other African Stories Book

Here is a collection of folk tales covering many peoples and many regions of Africa. They reflect ways of living and thinking that will soon have disappeared completely. There are tales of heroes and pseudo-heroes, human and animal tricksters, conflicts and dilemmas. Some stories, like "The Song of Gimmile," which uses the strange custom of singing as a social weapon against injustice, are peculiarly African, while others, like "The Stone Lute," a fable set in Northern Rhodesia, bear a marked similarity to tales in the folkore of Asia, America, and Europe. All of the stories, which lend themselves ideally to telling or to reading aloud, combine a wise and humorous approach to human foibles the world over and yet are uniquely African. Harold Courlander, well known as a compiler of folk tales through his earlier books, including The Tiger's Whisker and The Hat-Shaking Dance, has gathered together an unusual collection that is particularly timely now with world interest focused on Africa. Enrico Arno's distinguished illustrations have caught graphically the flavor of the fables and the lands from which they come.Read More