Tales From the Yoruba: Twenty Years of Adventure, Witchcraft, and Chaos in the Heart of Nigeria
Product Description
Discover the strange, shocking, and hauntingly beautiful lands of the Yoruba tribe.Tales from the Yoruba by Hillel Gilboa is a fascinating literary work that lies on the delicate seam line between anthropological research and hilarious, sharp humor. Its short stories are entertaining, surprising, funny, sometimes sad, and are based in part on real events. You are invited to a journey deep into the beating heart of Nigeria - a country rich with diverse cultures, that looks chaotic with a daily struggle for survival.The book brilliantly shows the important distinction between the goals of "living" and "living better". The stories move across a wide spectrum of emotions. On the one hand, there is the absolute absurdity, when a worker builds a perfect wall around himself without the possibility of getting out, or the watermelons that are meticulously watered by hand precisely in the midst of a torrential tropical rain.On the other hand, the stories fearlessly dive into the horror and mysticism of the world of Juju - the local sorcery in which ancient rituals, cultists, and witches influence gruesome fates. He describes the "instant justice" in which the mob executes suspects in order to create a deterrence where bush laws rule. If we can read deep between the lines, we can understand that the logic that might have eluded us is certainly there. Read more
