The classic stories of our childhood—"Cinderella," "The Sleeping Beauty," Little Red Riding Hood"—exist only in books today, but they started their lives as oral tales told from one generation to the next. In Ethiopia, however, great treasuries of fairy tales still live in people's heads and have never been written down. Old people sit together in the evenings and tell each other stories that were already old a hundred years ago. Elizabeth Laird—a winner of the Reader's Choice award and the Children's Book award—spent two years traveling around Ethiopia and collecting the tales in this anthology. She was told stories by Muslims in the hot, dry deserts of the East; Christians from the cool, central Highlands; and people from even older religions from the warm, humid South. The different faiths and cultures are reflected in the stories, with their varying notions of God, heaven, and the spirit world. You will enjoy the funny stories with a twist, the exciting adventure stories of brave warriors and hunters, the clever stories of cunning and trickery, along with stories about ogres and kings and merchants and farmers and animals.
Author
Laird was born in New Zealand in 1943, the fourth of five children. Her father was a ship's surgeon; both he and Laird's mother were Scottish. In 1945, Laird and her family returned to Britain and she grew up in South London, where she was educated at Croydon High School. When she was eighteen, Laird started teaching at a school in Malaysia. She decided to continue her adventurous life, even though she was bitten by a poisonous snake and went down with typhoid. After attending the university in Bristol, Laird began teaching English in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She and a friend would hire mules and go into remote areas in the holidays. After a while at Edinburgh University, Laird worked in India for a summer. During travel, she met her future husband, David McDowall, who she said was very kind to her when she was airsick on a plane. The couple were married in 1975 and have two sons, Angus and William. Laird has also visited Iraq and Lebanon. She claims to dislike snakes, porridge and being cold but enjoys very dark chocolate, Mozart, reading and playing the violin in the Iraq Symphony Orchestra. She currently lives in Richmond, London with her husband.
