Product details
- ISBN 9781803289045
- Weight: 60g
- Dimensions: 124 x 188mm
- Publication Date: 01 Feb 2024
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Collected by Yoruba poet Bakare Gbadamosi and scholar Ulli Beier, Not Even God Is Ripe Enough is a mesmerising collection of traditional oral stories and lighthearted Yoruba fables.
Including stories such as 'Kindness won't kill you but it can give you a lot of worries', 'He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return' and 'You can fool others but can you fool yourself?' Not Even God is Ripe Enough is a wide-ranging selection of amusing Yoruba proverbs and tales of magical realism.
From bizarre stories of talking animals to wise parables passed down from generation to generation, these stories are full of surprising twists, humour, and the surreal.
Bakare Gbadamosi is a Yoruba poet, anthropologist, and short story writer born in 1930 in Osogbo, Nigeria. Gbadamosi is known for his work on collecting and translating Yoruba folk tales and traditional poetry. Alongside writing his own poetry, he also worked as a stagehand and actor, collaborating with famous dramatist, Duro Ladipo, in a theatre group in Osogbo. In the late 1960s, he was employed by the Nigerian Museum as an ethnographer in Lagos.
Ulli Beier was born in 1922 in Germany. He attended the University of London where he gained an interest in traditional Yoruba culture, launching his career as a leading scholar of literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria. He was also a successful editor, translator, and writer. In 1961, he co-founded the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan, an influential meeting point for writers to share and perform their work. Its members included Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Christopher Okigbo. Beier died in 2011.
