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Kalila and Dimna: Fables of Friendship and Betrayal | 
 enlarge | Author: Ramsay Wood
Creators: Professor Christine Van Ruymbeke, Margaret Kilrenny, Doris Lessing
Publisher: Saqi Books
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £3.49
You Save: £6.50 (65%)
New (24) Used (5) from £3.49
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 93079
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised and Updated
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 303
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0863566618
Dewey Decimal Number: 398.2452
EAN: 9780863566615
ASIN: 0863566618
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: In perfect condition.
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| Customer Reviews:
A Mirror for Princes July 4, 2008
The question is: How to deal with what may seem unpredictable? 'The Iliad', 'The Bible', 'The Ramayana', and many other collections of tales, all deal with archetypal situations which arise over and over again, and how they play out. The old myths and stories lay out patterns of response to the automatic behaviour which our species so often displays.
Ramsay Wood's 'Kalila and Dimna' is bursting with such stories. They are part of a corpus of wisdom tales, also called 'The Fables of Bidpai' or 'The Panchatantra' in an ancient educational genre known as A Mirror for Princes.
Aesop's Fables are indebted to them, as are many other collections of tales in many cultures, down to la Fontaine and beyond. They feature the doings of all kinds of animals: cunning, stupid, wise, strong, greedy, weak, forbearing, thoughtful and impatient. These fables came from India in the 1st millennium BCE and Wood re-tells them in accessible modern language which, at times, is truly enchanting.
From them we see that there have always been people who understood how things happen and this helps avoid surprise or discomfiture over the inevitable. It may even help some of us by-pass the undesirable.
A new, old classic June 21, 2008
The remarkable pedigree of this collection of fables goes back more than two thousand years and, as Doris Lessing's illuminating introduction points out, its offspring can be traced in literary artefacts from the Far East to the Far West.
However, this new version of Kalila and Dimna is delicious enough even without the extra seasoning of historical curiosity.
Ramsay Wood has restored and polished these venerable stories for a contemporary readership with verve, color, pace and truly zany humour while preserving the spellbinding story-within-story framework. Read it yourself - or aloud to children. I did and we all loved it. We learn that this represents only a portion of the original. Next, please?
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