Tale
Zennan tereten qeddamot
Not translated into English
Yacob Ghebreyesus · 1949
Synopsis
About a hundred tales, three thousand three hundred proverbs and poems in Tigrinya, gathered by a Catholic priest who taught and wanted to give his pupils something to read. The tales are not described in detail: their number and purpose are known, and Mussie Tesfagiorgis refers to the collection for a proverb from the oral tradition; no source summarises any particular tale.
Context
The collection appeared in 1949 in Asmara, at the Comboni school according to Mussie Tesfagiorgis, when Eritrea was under British administration. Ghirmai Negash sees in it a breakthrough: despite the rise of the press after 1942, no Tigrinya book had yet appeared, for lack of funds and know-how, and because the Italians still held the country's few printing houses. The first novels in this language followed at the turn of the fifties. The Lund article notes, under the same name, another title, dated 1935.
Who it is for
A collection in Tigrinya, never translated into French or English; it interests those who study Eritrean oral tradition and the beginnings of the book in Tigrinya.
Prizes and reception
The account by Ghirmai Negash makes it the book that opened Tigrinya publishing after 1942; Mussie Tesfagiorgis still cites it in 2010.