Folktales of Ancient India: 25 Years In The Making
Lately, I’ve been trying to finish off a bunch of old projects that I’ve let wither out on the branch of procrastination. One such project was once a labour of love that, ironically, I managed to mostly complete, but never took the final important steps to total fruition… until now.
I’m talking about an anthology of centuries-old village stories that I collected decades ago, nominally titled Folktales of Ancient India.
Back in 1999, my first book Sweet Like Saltwater had just been published, and was being met with some critical acclaim. While ideas for a follow-up novel were percolating in my little brain, I decided to act on another immediate literary desire: to bring to the fore the old stories of South Asia.
So I immediately camped myself in the stacks of the library of the University of Toronto, poring over dusty tomes from the disciplines of cultural anthropology, history, and anything adjacent to folklore studies. What emerged was a collection of 27 traditional tales that I massaged and rewrote, in an attempt to channel the Brother Grimm for Indian tales. I had hoped to collect a total of 50. But the task was a lot more draining than I had anticipated; 27 would be sufficient.
I would later introduce some of those stories when I did public book readings all over the world, in Canada, India, and Trinidad. The audience in the latter particularly enjoyed these stories. One called,”Harisharam the Frog” was the clear crowd favourite.
But I dragged my feet on getting the collection to a publisher. I had preliminary talks with my existing publisher at the time. But nothing came of it. Seventeen years later, I took another stab at editing them. But other matters intruded and the project stagnated yet again.
Which brings us to 2024, a full quarter century since I first collected these tales. The world of publishing is quite different now, and I have a functioning imprint of my own, from which I regularly publish Amazon books. Thus, Folktales of Ancient India is due to be published on Amazon in a few weeks.
Now, I’m giving FREE PDF copies to the first 25 people who ask for one. (One for each year this project has been simmering.) If you get a free copy, I hope you will consider leaving an honest review on Amazon. It would be much appreciated. To receive a free copy, please enter your details here:
- https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CVBWBZC
- (UPDATE: I have enough people now! Thank you so much!)
Now, full disclosure: this is a THIN volume. It’s only 27 very short tales, a total of 20 thousand words, which is not a lot. And I wrote it in old-fashioned verbiage, as my intent was to preserve a Tolkien-like voice of erudition. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
The book will go live on Amazon on the evening of June 27th. Because it’s so thin, I’m pricing it as cheaply as I possibly can. Still, some reviews would be nice. So do consider leaving one when the book goes live.
Thank you!
I will leave you with some excerpts from three of the included tales:
