Sunjata: A New Prose Version: A New Prose Version

About the Book

"After existing orally for hundreds of years, Sunjata was written down in the 20th century. David Conrad, who recorded a new version of the epic, has now crafted a prose translation that preserves the oral flavor of live performance. The result is a captivating work of literature that will finally give the story of Sunjata its well-deserved place among the great epics of world literature."
-Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University

About the Author :

David C. Conrad is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Oswego, and President of the Mande Studies Association.

Review :
"Conrad's translation seems to me much clearer and more accessible than Niane’s 1965 rendering. In addition, Conrad's notes are exceedingly useful. His maps, and his notes on the maps, are terrific.
     "The Sunjata epic speaks to the founding of the great empire of Mali. The introduction situates the epic in the world of the Mande, as a people, culture, and group of languages; it also provides the context for the epic, and explains the meaning of a "bard," origin mythologies, linkage with a founding ancestor, as well as events and their cosmic interpretations.
     "[In this translation we can hear] a powerful griot voice, chanting about histories, singing about heroes and genealogies, and reciting poetry on memories, all accomplished in ways to give us an expansive entry into the past of a world that forcefully speaks to the present, inviting wonder and imagination about the possibilities for a greater future."
—Toyin Falola, University of Texas Austin, and author of A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt "This new prose translation has preserved both the literary aesthetic and the intimacy of a griot performance, while at the same time creating a very readable text. To me, this prose translation is–in spite of absence of some songs typical for the Sunjata narrative–an excellent visualization in print of a performance of the Sunjata epic, in all its complexity. . . . I believe wholeheartedly that this prose translation will reveal to [readers] the beauty of one of the greatest works of mankind."
—Jan Jansen, University of Leiden, in Canadian Journal of African Studies "Conrad's translation seems to me much clearer and more accessible than [previous] renderings. In addition, Conrad's notes are exceedingly useful. His maps, and his notes on the maps, are terrific.
     "The Sunjata epic speaks to the founding of the great empire of Mali. Conrad’s Introduction situates the epic in the world of the Mande, as a people, culture, and group of languages; it also provides the context for the epic, and explains the meaning of a ‘bard,’ origin mythologies, linkage with a founding ancestor, as well as events and their cosmic interpretations.
     "[In this translation we can hear] a powerful griot voice, chanting about histories, singing about heroes and genealogies, and reciting poetry on memories, all accomplished in ways to give us an expansive entry into the past of a world that forcefully speaks to the present, inviting wonder and imagination about the possibilities for a greater future."
—Toyin Falola, Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, The University of Texas at Austin