book review: KALILA WA DIMNA كليلة و دمنة

We all have one of those old books on our bookshelves that we saw there since we were kids but never picked it up to read it, kalila wa dimna is one of those books, everytime I organize my bookshelf I see it and I promise myself that one day I'm going to read it and that day did come. My motive to read it was my love to tales, I like knowing them, telling them to children mostly to my younger cousins.

Kalila wa Dimna is one of the most famous book tales in the world, a lot of the animal stories that we had read or saw on TV when we were kids were inspired by this book. That's why I was so excited to read it and to review it for you.

While reading the book I discovered that the few informations I knew about it where all false, So this is a list of facts I didn't know about Kalila wa Dimna :  

• Kalila wa Dimna is not an arabic book, it's an indian book that had been translated to so many languages but the most ancient written copy of it that we can find is in Arabic, that's what made the arabic version so famous.
• The writer of this version is the author Ibn al-Muqaffa'.
• The book contains tales that takes place in the animal world but not all of them there are some tales about humans.
• In the introduction of the book the writer tells the readers that this book is not a children book, he has the right to say so because he sent through it political messages to the king of that time P.S Ibn al-Muqaffa' was killed cruelly because of his political opinions.
• Kalila and Dimna are not two nice girls, I don't know what made me think so maybe their names, actually Kalila and Dimna are two Jackals ابن آوى , they are really smart animals, Dimna can do any thing to reach its goal, which make him the evil one.
• Kalila and Dimna use tales to explain and convince the others of their thoughts.
• The edition I did read, which was arranged by Fouad SHAKER, contains eight chapters called bab باب in arabic, Kalila and Dimna are only present in the first two chapters of the book, which are the longest chapters in the book they represent half of it. The other half is about other characters.
     

Now my opinion about KALILA WA DIMNA :

1.     The book is full of very beautiful and meaningful tales, but not all the tales in it can be told to a kid, some of it contains violence and sexual themes. ( one story I would say in particular).

2.    It was really hard for me to stay focus while reading the book, firstly because I didn't read in arabic for a while, I didn't even understand some words which is shame because I studied this language for 12 year. Secondly because of the style of writing sometimes I got really confused when someone start telling a tale about an other person telling a tale I even get lost and forget the original story.

3.     If you want to finish this book you need to be so patient and I think this book is worth the patience and the time.

I was so glad to read this book, it made me remember that time when mom and my auntes used to tell me tales especial the tales of Boumhand and Ouchen. Boumhand is a Hedgehog and Ouchen is a Fox they are in tachlhit and their adventures are so funny. I think that in every culture there are stories like this. Does poeple still tell their kids those stories or do they just let them in front of the TV screen?