Books with author Wafa' Tarnowska

The stories in this book come from one of the most widely read books in the Arab world, after the Koran - a book called Kalila wa Dimna. Kalila wa Dimna is considered a masterpiece of Arab prose. It was written in 750 A.D. at a time when the Abbasside dynasty in Baghdad was translating important works from Greek, Indian and Persian literature, building great libraries and encouraging art, poetry, astronomy, the sciences and medicine. Some of the stories may seem familiar as they found their way into The Thousand and One Nights a few centuries later.Kalila wa Dimna has been translated into forty languages but this is one of the rare English translations for children, which is great because it is a standard school text throughout the Arab world. I have selected fifteen stories from the original fifty-nine – stories about friendship and betrayal, lies and honesty, cowardice and courage – and hope that a new generation of children will love them as much as others have done in the twelve centuries since they were written.Wafa’ Tarnowska