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Product Description
Review
‘These stories speak to and belong to the whole of humanity. . . .
What Ramsay has done over the last thirty years is to have made the version for our time.’
From the Introduction by Michael Wood – historian, broadcaster and author of The Story of India
'An intricately woven web of some of the world’s oldest and greatest
stories, sweetly and humourously retold, and begging to be read aloud
to a new generation of listeners.’
William Dalrymple, author of City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
‘Kalila wa Dimna is, like the Arabian Nights, an engine room of
stories – and stories within stories. It is also one of the undoubted
masterpieces of world literature. Its tales mingle entertainment and wisdom. The limpidity of Ramsay Wood’s prose echoes that of the Indian original.’
Robert Irwin, author of The Arabian Nights: a Companion
‘A must-read for anyone interested in the masterpieces of world
literature – or just in a totally engrossing and entertaining reading
experience. This book is an amazing gift to all of us who love good stories and great storytelling!’
Lisa Alther, author of Kinflicks
Book Description
Kalila and Dimna or The Panchatantra (also known in Europe since 1483 as The Fables of Bidpai) is a multi-layered, inter-connected and variable arrangement of animal stories, with one story leading into another, sometimes three or four deep. These arrangements have contributed to world literature for over 2000 years, migrating across ancient cultures in a multitude of written and oral formats. All our beast fables from Aesop and the Buddhist Jatakas through La Fontaine to Uncle Remus owe this strange, shape-shifting ‘book’ a huge debt.
In its original Arabic format, Kalila and Dimna (The Panchatantra being its long-lost Sanskrit precursor), ostensibly constitutes a handbook for rulers, a so-called ‘Mirror for Princes’ illustrating indirectly, through a cascade of teaching stories and verse, how to (and how not to!) run the kingdom of your life. In their slyly profound grasp of human nature at its best (and worst!) these animal fables, usually avoiding any moralistic human criticism, serve up digestible sage counsel for us all.
Based on a collation of scholarly translations from key Sanskrit, Syriac, Arabic and Persian texts, as well as the 1570 English rendition by Sir Thomas North, Ramsay Wood offers the first uncompromisingly modern re-telling in either the East or West for over 400 years. In Wood’s version the profound meanings behind these ancient fables shine forth as he captures a great world classic, making it fresh, relevant, fascinating and hugely readable.
His second volume of fables from Kalila and Dimna picks up where the first, Fables of Friendship and Betrayal Volume 1: Fables from the Panchatantra, Jatakas, Bidpai, Kalilah and Dimnah and Lights of Canopus , left off – covering deceit, political skullduggery, murder, enemies, deadly monsters, kings, bees, princesses, monkeys, lions, crocodiles and how we all live and die together in peace or conflict. This is a book full of outrageously behaved animals and humans doing the most delightfully awful (yet sometimes gentle) things to each other. These are joyous, sad, amusing and sometimes brutal stories; their function being to educate both king and commoner alike in the ways of the world, the harsh realities that can often lurk beneath the surface of our cozy, everyday subjectivity.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a book of ancient stories brilliantly retold in English. Stories within stories within stories. I patiently waited 30 years for Volume Two of Wood's retelling of the Tales of Bidpai and it was worth it. Buy these Fables of Conflict and Intrigue, read them, enjoy, learn ... and pass the word around.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There's a lot crammed into these 240 elegantly illustrated pages.
First there are the stories, of course; enjoy them, absorb them, make of them what you will (that's the whole idea!)
Then there's the magic that makes the linear, printed words fly off the page and flesh out the world of sound and gesture and human emotion that is the raw material (the 'nitty-gritty', so to speak) of the storyteller. It takes a real artist to make this happen. There's nothing more private and solitary than the writer's craft. Nothing more open and physically in-your-face than the storyteller's. With a foot in both camps, Ramsay Wood deftly applies the one to conjure up the other; and we, the readers, are instantly transformed into an audience in the ultimate storytellers' den. You can count on the fingers of a Tank Corps veteran's hand the writers who have achieved this feat in English.
If that were the end of the matter, it would already be a great deal. But Wood doesn't stop there. In an afterword, he patiently shares with us all that he has gleaned in his studies of the history of this timeless body of wisdom and invites us to reflect on its significance.
Nor does it stop there either: in an appendix he opens out the discussion to consider the role of storytelling in human evolution altogether, and offers us further ammunition with which to confront the fools that quote whoever it was that wrote: "When I became a man I put away childish things."
First there are the stories, of course; enjoy them, absorb them, make of them what you will (that's the whole idea!)
Then there's the magic that makes the linear, printed words fly off the page and flesh out the world of sound and gesture and human emotion that is the raw material (the 'nitty-gritty', so to speak) of the storyteller. It takes a real artist to make this happen. There's nothing more private and solitary than the writer's craft. Nothing more open and physically in-your-face than the storyteller's. With a foot in both camps, Ramsay Wood deftly applies the one to conjure up the other; and we, the readers, are instantly transformed into an audience in the ultimate storytellers' den. You can count on the fingers of a Tank Corps veteran's hand the writers who have achieved this feat in English.
If that were the end of the matter, it would already be a great deal. But Wood doesn't stop there. In an afterword, he patiently shares with us all that he has gleaned in his studies of the history of this timeless body of wisdom and invites us to reflect on its significance.
Nor does it stop there either: in an appendix he opens out the discussion to consider the role of storytelling in human evolution altogether, and offers us further ammunition with which to confront the fools that quote whoever it was that wrote: "When I became a man I put away childish things."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My book club recently read this one. Out of 10 of us 8 thought it a very good choice- for our argumentative group about as good as it gets. (The 2 dissenters always find flaws.) There's alot of meat for a lengthy discussion so I'd recommend.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
London Bookgroup
We were very equally balanced in our views, 2 loved it - easy reading and like peeling an onion, funny, the imagery transporting them to a child like place. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Mrs. Jennifer J. Thomas
nut job novel
This new novel seems to be passing people by, not helped by its lousy cover reminiscent of a those 70s collections of traditional tales sold in Indian railway station bookshops. Read more
Published 12 days ago by R. Twigger
Episodic Insight
An idiosyncratic, not to say peculiar, work. Story after story, wrapped inside one other in a Sterne-like rambling style. Read more
Published 23 days ago by Cumberland Critic
An enchanting read
What a treat bedtime is at present with nightly visits from these entertaining characters who have meandered their way through centuries of storytelling. Read more
Published 1 month ago by JOJO
A must-read for any modern storyteller, story reader or writer!
This second volume of Ramsay Wood's Kalila & Dimna saga is a nourishing collection of stories that will leave you thoroughly `well-fed' from both an entertainment and learning... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Alexander Hall
Magical
This re-working of ancient tales is an absolute joy. Ramsay Wood is a gifted conduit through which an array of characters, both animal and human, perform their intricate dances for... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Weasel
Well worth reading and treasuring!
Ramsay Wood's 'Kalila and Dimna, fables of conflict and intrigue follows his collection of fables in 2010. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Reader
Refreshing and apposite after 2000 years
How refreshing to find an age-old text which is this readable, with comments like, "If I never see you again, it will be too soon. S** off!" scattered through the book. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Robin
Snappy
Nifty use of contemporary English language throws new light on a very ancient story telling tradition. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Alison Bell
who'd have thought old tales could be such fun?
I was given the book as a present and approached warily. Old stories - I thought it would be hard work reading, but duty calls.. What a surprise. Read more
Published 3 months ago by tallus
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