Folktales of the Kxoe in the West Caprivi

Author: Christa Kilian-Hatz. With drawings by: Benat B. Diwana. Series edited by: Wilfrid H.G. Haacke.

Series: Namibian African Studies Volume 5

1999
8 pp. Roman, 338 pp.
1 map, 79 drawings
Text language(s): English
E-book
€ 49.80

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The Kxoe language is classified linguistically as a member of the Central-Khoisan group. The Kxoe live in Northeastern Namibia in the Caprivi strip (with a population of about 8,000), in Angola, Botswana, Zambia, and in Smithsdrift, South Africa, where the Kxoe population numbers approximately 1,600. The collection presented here is the first systematic documentation of Kxoe oral narratives ‘that are not true’.

The Kxoe distinguish between two main kinds of oral narratives: ‘true stories’ and ‘stories that are not true’. ‘True stories’ are didactic in nature and describe, for example, how certain illnesses can be cured. ‘Stories that are not true’ (yiiceregu) do not take place in the present world but in mythical time, and include the three following genres: fables, legends, and creation myths.

The twenty-one yiiceregu in this collection give an overview of the different genres. All yiiceregu are narrated exclusively at night, since it is considered a taboo to tell these stories by daylight; night-time narration is a sign of respect for the ancestors who figure in the stories. To speak about them during the day is to reveal their secrets.

This book is intended to be accessible to all readers interested in oral literature. For ease of readability all twenty-one yiiceregu are presented in the same manner: first the story is told in Kxoe, in numbered sentences that are then rendered in English in an interlinear translation. A free translation in English follows, which remains as faithful as possible to the original narrative, and each English sentence is marked with the number of the corresponding Kxoe sentence. At the end of each narrative, the author provides a short commentary on the moral and messages of the tale.

Further editions by the same author and similar text collections have been published in our programme, see the following links:

Accompanying material:

• A Grammar of Modern Khwe (Central Khoisan) (ISBN 978-3-89645-863-6)
• Catalogue of the Khoisan Folktales of Southern Africa (ISBN 978-3-89645-870-4)
• Khwe Dictionary (ISBN 978-3-89645-083-8)

Cross-reference:

• „Derjenige, der sich selbst erschaffen hat …“ (ISBN 978-3-89645-283-2)
• Contes des Bakas (Sud-Est Cameroun) (ISBN 978-3-89645-272-6)
• Narrations of the Kavango (ISBN 978-3-89645-279-5)
• Trommeln in der Kirche (ISBN 978-3-89645-917-6)

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