Children of Wax: African Folk Tales [Paperback]

Product Details

• Paperback: 119 pages
• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0862412501
• ISBN-13: 978-0862412500
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,565,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alexander McCall Smith was born in what is now Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is now Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He has written more than fifty books, including a number of specialist titles, but is best known for The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which has achieved bestseller status on four continents. In 2004 he was awarded British Book Awards Author of the Year and Booksellers Association Author of the Year. He lives in Scotland, where in his spare time he is a bassoonist in the RTO (Really Terrible Orchestra).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living Tales, May 15, 2006

By 

Bill Jordin (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Children of Wax: African Folk Tales (International Folk Tales) (Paperback)

Children of Wax (1989) is a collection of African folk tales. These stories were obtained on two widely separated trips among the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe, who are descended from an offshoot of the Zulus. There are certain similarities to the tales of neighboring tribes. These tales often include a moral, but are essentially designed to entertain an audience.

These stories are about animals that talk and about people who can be swallowed by animals or quicksand, yet survive. Several tales are about the tricky hare who outsmarts the lion; in America such stories were told about Br'er Rabbit. Other tales tell of tricky Guinea fowl, baboons, strange animals and even humans; the tricky humans, however, usually found themselves to be losers at the end.

The author seems to have captured much of the native mode of story telling in these folk tales. These stories also have a simplicity and phraseology that should be very familiar to fans of Precious Ramotswe and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Some of this style must be inherent to the author, but much has to be adopted from the people themselves.

This collection contains twenty-seven folk tales. These stories, with thirteen others, are also included in a more recent collection: The Girl Who Married a Lion.

Highly recommended to fans of McCall Smith and to anyone else who enjoys exotic folk tales of strange yet familiar lands.

-Bill Jordin