Ruth Finnegan

LITERARY TITAN GOLD AWARD It is a common notion that Africa has, and indeed ought to have, learned much from the west. This is not wrong; all cultures rightly learn from each other. But less is said of what there is to learn from Africa: from her stories, myths, music, proverbs, insights - and more. Here an acclaimed African scholar steps into the gap by uncovering for us something of the great legacy of African thought and practice in ways that will astonish many. Written with verve and authority and directed above all to students and sixth formers, this book will also delight and often surprise those who know something of Africa as well as those hitherto ignorant. Ruth Finnegan OBE FBA is Emeritus Professor The Open University, Foreign Associate of the Finnish Literature Bureau, and International Fellow of the American Folklore Society. An anthropologist and multi-award author, she has published extensively, chiefly on Africa, musical practice, and English urban life. Recent books include How is Language?, Fiji's Music: Where Did It Come From?, her edited Entrancement: The Consciousness of Dreaming, Music and The World, and two prize-winning Africa-influenced novels Black Inked Pearl and Voyage of Pearl of the Seas.

The poor poor dragon, with his boils and his bruises and blisters and SINS. His UGLINESS. No universe any more either, someone had blown it up (his universe, he needed it) . So no dragon - just boils and horrid scaley scales and blisters and .... Can the little lady from Donegal help? Re-create the universe? See that his shining scales and his lovely curves exist and are beautiful? A stunning tale of self-hate resolved. This is the latest volume (2021) of the fantastic Little Angel Books by a prize-winning author.

Sinbad the Sailor sets out over the sea to retrieve his fortune with all his remaining goods on board. They alight on a beautiful island - but no it is a huge whale who, awakened by their shouts, tosses Sinbad painfully into the sea. Magically rescued he is befriended by a great king, and his ship, with crew and full cargo wondrously returns. Sinbad returns to his beloved Baghdad, now a rich man - till the next voyage A tale from the Arabian Nights, a collection of adventures parallel to Homer's Odyssey. Like your grandmother told you.

A beautifully illustrated rendering of the famous age old verse also known as ''The Dilly Song'' and 'The Ten Commandments'. Uniquely this edition also contains expert notes on the many variants, distribution (across many lands), centurues-old history and still debated, predominantly religious, meanings. Altigether a most fascinating and inspiring work.

A little angel, banished from heaven, can only return if he observes and records seven acts of real goodness on earth. Homesick and cold - and not believing that good deeds are possible on earth anyway - he does his best, meeting some unexpected people and actions on the way. But will he ever be able to circumvent the edict banishing him and get back home?

On a wild Irish strand Kate flees in panic from her best friend's kiss, then must search for him through the universe. This first volume of Finnegan's Kate-Pearl series, at once stirring romance and spiritual parable, has won many plaudits for Its literary style, reminiscent of writers like Joyce, Faulkner, Hopkins, Yeats, or Homer. This revised and enlarged edition, reproduced with corrections from the author's original manuscript, includes an extended analysis of its unusual style and genesis.

MEET THE SUN In this enthralling little book anthropologist and novelist Ruth Finnegan adapts the work of the heliogeologist Claudio Vita-Finzi to introduce young (and older ) readers to the workings of the sun and its many threats and mysteries. In accessible language it tackles such difficult matters as neutrinos, cosmic rays and the solar corona in the belief that all its readers will thereby be better equipped to deal with our dangerous star and a few may even be inspired to become solar physicists, cancer specialists and astronauts themselves. A book not to be missed by anyone interested in our precious solar planet and its place in the universe. BALESTIER PRESS HEARING OTHERS'. VOICES

The classic account by doyen prize-winning anthropologist Ruth Finnegan of the issues, crucial for us all, surrounding oral and written communication as they worked - and still work - out in the romantic islands dotted round the Pacific Ocean. A riveting short book, remarkable equally for its scholarship and its readability. Not to be missed by anyone interested in these fundamental processes of our culture, Read more in Ruth's fabulous Orality and Literacy series - she is an accepted world authority on these far-reaching issues - of interest and importance to each of us. And then about the hidden nature of human communication in the so-often-misunderstood secrets revealed in her 'Communicating' and how we so amazingly overlap with animals and even have much to learn from them (startle your friends - and yourself )

Ever wondered what the thieves in the Ali Baba story were really like? Where they came from and how they were recruited and what exactly they did? And were they all the same? You don't know? Find the amazing answers in the story of an ordinary little boy, a newly discovered version now for the first time revealed. An absorbing fairy tale for children of all ages, young or not, with an unexpected twist and an ecological and human ending.

A stunning account of how things that seem just part of everyday life, are in fact extraordinary once we notice them. As anthropologists do when they stop to listen. As poets do when they see the world in a grain of sand. When we see how things that are not normally defined as special, perhaps because studied or practised by 'amateurs' rather than 'specialists', are often truly special. How as we go through our daily round our lives are surrounded by splendour.After you read this then world will never look the same.

A companion story to Ruth Finnegan's multi-award inspirational novel 'Black Inked Pearl', this time, unusually, told from the perspective of the ever-sounding sea A volume in the unique 'Kate-Pearl' series

What is the role of sound in human like?and of music? What do we use it for and ow does it vary across the world? Where does it come from and above all why should we - as we do - care about it?This series of reflections by the celebrated anthropologist Ruth Finnegan tackles these questions and more in her inimitable friendly and accessible style. An Informative and inspiring book, unique.

Once upon a time in the long long ago there were two children. One was poor. One was rich. One was very good at sums. The other one was not. But they liked each other a lot. And all the time they were playing together... A fairytale retold by Ruth Finnegan, illustrated by Liz Amini-Holmes.