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African Folktales

10 best books like African Folktales (Roger D. Abrahams): African Myths of Origin, Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies, A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend and Folklore, Latin American Folktales, Russian Fairy Tales, Favorite Folktales from Around the World, Folktales from India, French Folktales, Norwegian Folktales, Arab Folktales

African Myths of Origin
AuthorAnonymous
ISBN0140449450
Gathering a wide range of traditional African myths, this compelling new collection offers tales of heroes battling mighty serpents and monstrous birds, brutal family conflict and vengeance, and desperate migrations across vast and alien lands. From impassioned descriptions of animal-creators...
Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies
AuthorMoss Roberts
Quite a treasury. I liked the numerous short fables even better than the stories. And the introduction, that gives just a bit of historical context, esp. re the rivalry between the Confucians and the Taoists, is helpful.

My favorite is one of the very shortest:

"The Missing Axe

"A...
A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend and Folklore
AuthorW.B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (pronounced /ˈjeɪts/) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the...
Latin American Folktales
AuthorJohn Bierhorst
The wisdom and artistry of Latin America's storytellers preserve one of the world's richest folktale traditions—combining the lore of medieval Europe, the ancient Near East, and pre-Columbian America. Among the essential characters are the quiet man's wife who knew the Devil's secrets, the...
Russian Fairy Tales
AuthorAlexander Afanasyev
ISBN0394730909
Translated by Norbert Guterman

Illustrated by Alexander Alexeieff

In this most comprehensive collection of classic Russian tales available in English we meet both universal fairy-tale figures—thieves and heroes, kings and peasants, beautiful damsels and terrifying witches,...
Favorite Folktales from Around the World
AuthorJane Yolen
Yolen, Jane. Favorite Folktales from Around the World (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) (1986).
Hero
The Iroquois story of "The Flying Head" tells the folktale of a giant head with wings that came out of its cheeks and a mouth full of fangs. This giant head would fly at night looking...
Folktales from India
AuthorA.K. Ramanujan
An enchanting collection of 110 tales, translated from twenty-two different languages, that are by turns harrowing and comic, sardonic and allegorical, mysterious and romantic. Gods disguised as beggars and beasts, animals enacting Machiavellian intrigues, sagacious jesters and magical storytellers,...
French Folktales
AuthorHenri Pourrat
ISBN0679748334
Selected from Henri Pourrat's classic Le tresor des contes, one of the finest folktale collections in the world, these one-hundred-odd legends, fairy tales, devotional pieces, jokes, and animal stories from the rural provinces of France comprise a magical volume. Fairies, changelings, giants,...
Norwegian Folktales
AuthorPeter Christen Asbjørnsen
Long a treasure in Norway, the folktales collected by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe have been acclaimed for their richness of humor, fullness of life, and depth of understanding since they first appeared in translation more than a hundred years ago. The Norwegian folktales, said Jacob...
Arab Folktales
AuthorInea Bushnaq
ISBN0394751795
While containing a broad sampling of folktales from the Arab people, there are a few problems that consistently bothered me about this book. The author, in her commentary, claims that "the true Arab is the desert nomad," an idea which folklorist Dwight Reynolds has said is culturally inaccurate and...
Italian Folktales
AuthorItalo Calvino
ISBN0156454890
One of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are “a treasure” (Los Angeles Times).
 
Filled with kings and peasants, saints and ogres—as well as some quite extraordinary plants and animals—these two...
Irish Folk Tales
AuthorHenry Glassie
Robust and funny, sorrowful and heroic, this collection of 125 lively tales tells the story of Ireland. Spanning the centuries from the first wars of the ancient Irish kings through the Celtic Renaissance of Yeats to our own time, they are set in cities, villages, fields and forestsfrom the wild Gaelic...
Japanese Tales
AuthorRoyall Tyler
Here are two hundred and twenty dazzling tales from medieval Japan, tales that welcome us into a fabulous, faraway world populated by saints and scoundrels, ghosts and magical healers, and a vast assortment of deities and demons. Stories of miracles, visions of hell, jokes, fables, and legends, these...
American Indian Myths and Legends
AuthorRichard Erdoes
This magnificent collection gathers 160 tales from 80 tribal gathers to offer a rich and lively panorama of the Native American mythic heritage. From all across the continent come tales of creation and love, of heroes and war, of animals, tricksters, and the end of the world. Alfonso Ortiz, an eminent...
The Victorian Fairy Tale Book
AuthorMichael Patrick Hearn
From Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin and William Makepeace Thackeray’s Rose and the Ring to Kenneth Grahame’s Reluctant Dragon and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, here are seventeen classic stories and poems from the golden age of the English fairy tale. Some of them...
Swedish Folktales and Legends
AuthorLone Thygesen Blecher
ISBN0816645752
Swedish Folktales and Legends is a diverse and representative collection of stories from Sweden's centuries-old folklore tradition. Ranging from the ribald to the romantic, from the rustic to the mythical, these are lively translations of 150 tales drawn from unique sources including the Swedish...
The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World
AuthorEthel Johnston Phelps
ISBN0805006796
The Maid of the North weaves together tales about a woman's right to freedom of will and choice. In this collection of mostly nineteenth-century folk and fairy tales, Ethel Johnston Phelps's heroines successfully portray women as being spirited, courageous and smart. This type of heroine is not easily...
Northern Tales: Stories from the Native Peoples of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Regions
AuthorHoward Norman
ISBN0375702679
From Greenland to Siberia, from Alaska to Japan, from Canada to North Pole, here are more than one hundred folktales from more than thirty tribal peoples who make their home in the arctic and subarctic regions.By turns tragic and comic, fantastic and earthy, uncanny and profound, these tales transport...
Best-Loved Folktales of the World
AuthorJoanna Cole
ISBN0385189494
A great compendium of stories with the common hidden theme which you can find if you read them with your heart.

Some favorites:

Maid Lena: This story reveals that the source of our lack of energy and courage is the result of something being “dead at our center,” and the necessity...
Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
AuthorMaria Tatar
ISBN0691000883
When fairy tales moved from workrooms, taverns, and the fireside into the nursery, they not only lost much of their irreverent, earthy humor but were also deprived of their contestatory stance to official culture. Children's literature, Maria Tatar maintains, has always been more intent on producing...
Yiddish Folktales
AuthorBeatrice Silverman Weinreich
Filled with princesses and witches, dybbuks and wonder-working rebbes, the two hundred marvelous tales that make up this delightful compendium were gathered during the 1920s and 1930s by ethnographers in the small towns and villages of Eastern Europe. Collected from people of all walks of life,...
Folk-Tales of the British Isles
AuthorKevin Crossley-Holland
ISBN0394755537
A miscellaneous collection. Tales of fairies, fairy tales, ghost stories, tales of heroes, legends, jocular tales. . . .

If you are looking for one of those types, you may have to read through them all, because they are organized by themes that sometimes cross them. Some are literary -- we have...
British Folk Tales and Legends: A Sampler
AuthorKatharine M. Briggs
ISBN0415286026
In 1970 Katharine Briggs published in four volumes the vast and authoritative Dictionary of British Folktales and Legends to wide acclaim. This sampler comprises the very best of those tales and legends. Gathered within, readers will find an extravagance of beautiful princesses and stout stable...
The Irish Fairy Book
AuthorAlfred Perceval Graves
ISBN1859580173
Welcome to a world of wild banshees, leprechauns, mermaids, battle-tested kings, churchyard demons, and treasure-guarding cats. This is the world of the Irish fairy tale, a magical realm kept alive by generations of storytellers and their avid listeners. As Alfred Perceval Graves, author of the...
Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing
AuthorRob Spillman
ISBN0143114735
A one-of-a-kind collection showcasing the energy of new African literature

Coming at a time when Africa and African writers are in the midst of a remarkable renaissance, Gods and Soldiers captures the vitality and urgency of African writing today. With stories from northern Arabic-speaking...
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