Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
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Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
This is a retelling of a traditional African folktale with magical overtones. The king’s messenger arrives from the city and, in time honoured fashion, announces that the king wishes to choose a bride and invites all the most beautiful daughters in the land to appear before him. Manyara and Nyasha, two sisters, fit the bill but Manyara was as bad tempered, selfish and evil as Nyasha was even tempered, kind and considerate. Manyara sets out to gain an unfair advantage over her sister, but the king makes the right choice and all ends well. This story, no more or less politically correct than the familiar tale of Cinderella, has inspired some lush, stylish illustrations by Steptoe, based on an idealised African landscape and the ruins of an ancient Zimbabwe city (discovered relatively recently) which together serve up a positive image of pre-colonial African civilisation. This paperback edition is a valuable addition to the growing stock of multi-cultural resources.