Despite her family's threat to disown her, Idil, a young Somali woman, rejects her high Bliss status to marry Sidow, a poor Boon man. Her decision transforms her life, forcing her to face harsh and sometimes even deadly consequences for her defiance of a strict tribal hierarchy. Set in the fifteen-year period before Somalia's 1991 Civil War, Idil's journey is almost too hard to bear at times. Her determination to follow her heart and to pursue love over family and convention is a story that has been told across time and across cultures.

This book analyses the interplay between storytelling (with specific reference to oral retellings of authentic picture books), language learning, culture and emotions in the EFL pre-school and primary classroom. Using a multidisciplinary approach, it applies oral narrative studies, as well as research on shared reading with children and literature in picture books, to foreign and second language teaching theory and practice, while also discussing the impact of EFL storytelling on intercultural understanding. Although specifically conceived for teaching English as a foreign language, most contents apply to foreign/second language teaching to young children in general.

Literally translated as "ocean of the sea of stories, " the Kathasaritasagara is a collection of stories of the ancient Hindu world. It was written by Somadeva in the 11th century. Unlike those more familiar classics, this work contains no hidden moral lessons. Instead, it is an uninhibited and beautiful celebration of earthly life.

Hanuman, the devoted monkey helper of Rama and Sita, has long been recognized as a popular character in India's ancient Ramayana epic. But more recently he has also become one of the most beloved and worshiped gods in the Hindu pantheon - enshrined in majestic new temples, but equally present in poster art, advertising, and mass media. Drawing on Sanskrit and vernacular texts, classical iconography and modern TV serials, and extensive fieldwork and interviews, Philip Lutgendorf challenges the academic clich? of Hanuman as a "minor" or "folk" deity by exploring his complex and growing role in South Asian religion and culture. This wide-ranging study examines the historical evolution of Hanuman's worship, his close association with Shiva and goddesses, his invocation in tantric ritual, his physical immortality and enduring presence in sacred sites, and his appeal to devotees who include scholars, wrestlers, healers, politicians, and middle-class urbanites. Lutgendorf also offers a rich array of entertaining stories not previously available in English: an expanding epic cycle that he christens the "Hanumayana." Arguing that Hanuman's role as cosmic "middle man" is intimately linked to his embodiment in a charming and provocative simian form, Lutgendorf moves beyond the Indian subcontinent to interrogate the wider human fascination with anthropoid primates as boundary beings and as potent signifiers of both Self and Other.

A god transforms into a nymph and enchants another god. A king becomes pregnant. A prince discovers on his wedding night that he is not a man. Another king has children who call him both father and mother. A hero turns into a eunuch and wears female apparel. A princess has to turn into a man before she can avenge her humiliation. Widows of a king make love to conceive his child. Friends of the same sex end up marrying each other after one of them metamorphoses into a woman. These are some of the tales from Hindu lore that this unique book examines. The Man Who Was a Woman and Other Queer Tales from Hindu Lore is a compilation of traditional Hindu stories with a common thread: sexual transformation and gender metamorphosis. In addition to the thought-provoking stories in The Man Who Was a Woman and Other Queer Tales from Hindu Lore, you'll also find: an examination of the universality of queer narratives with examples from Greek lore and Irish folklore a comparison of the Hindu paradigm to the biblical paradigm a look at how Hindu society and Hindu scripture responds to queer sexuality a discussion of the Hijras, popularly believed to be the “third gender” in India--their probable origin, and how they fit into Hindu society With the telling of each of these tales, you will also learn how the author came upon each of them and how they relate to the context of dominant Hindu attitudes toward sex, gender, pleasure, fertility, and celibacy.

This is an attempt to spread some cheer and positive vibes at a time when there is an almost all-pervading gloom – largely triggered by the pandemic. The author has used his phenomenal memory to chronicle the instances narrated by luminaries like his family elders, school teachers, instructors from an in-service training institution and professional colleagues. There is also a section about some memorable programmes beamed over All India Radio. The readers will find that the book covers a wide gamut that includes humour, pragmatism, and life-skills. It could also be seen that the central characters in these instances are not well- known personalities (about whom most of us have already read or heard a lot). Instead, the ‘narrators’ have been persons with whom most of us can easily identify.

Ever since its early modern inception as a literary genre unto its own, the fairy tale has frequently provided authors with a textual space in which to reflect on the nature, status and function of their own writing and that of literature in general. At the same time, it has served as an ideal laboratory for exploring and experimenting with the boundaries of literary convention and propriety. While scholarship pertaining to these phenomena has focused primarily on the fairy-tale adaptations and deconstructions of postmodern(ist) writers, this essay collection adopts a more diachronic approach. It offers fairy-tale scholars and students a series of theoretical and literary-historical expositions, as well as case studies on English, French, German, Swedish, Danish, and Romanian texts from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, by authors as diverse as Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Rikki Ducornet, Hans Christian Andersen and Robert Coover.