Tale
الحكايات الشعبية الكويتية: دراسة مقارنة
Not translated into English
Safwat Kamal · 1985
Synopsis
Popular tales from Kuwait, gathered and compared with their Arab and foreign parallels. Many are born of the sea: in “Umm Sumayka”, a talking fish protects Noura, a sailor's daughter ill-treated by her stepmother, and helps her get to the palace feast; a fisherman releases a fish that offers him a palace; a poor diver sees the single pearl of his season slip away. The book also draws out the traits of the genre: simple style, anonymous storyteller, fear and the marvellous, the victory of good.
Context
The book appeared in Kuwait in 1985, published by the Kuwaiti state on the presses of the government printing house, in a single volume of four hundred and sixty pages; a second edition followed in the early nineties. Each tale is set beside its parallels: that of Umm Sumayka beside Cinderella, the Egyptian tale of Sitt al-Husn wa-l-Gamal and the Yemeni tale of the henna leaf. Tales of sailors, fishermen and pearls occupy a large place in it.
Who it is for
A scholarly work in Arabic, which gives the tales together with their comparative study; no translation of it has been found.
Prizes and reception
Researchers still draw their texts from it: a Turkish study from 2025 on the maritime motifs of the Kuwaiti tale is based on this collection.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.