Folklorist and anthropologist Harold Courlander (1908–1996) recorded these popular Ashanti stories in 1959, adapting them from his book The Hat Shaking Dance and Other Tales from the Gold Coast. Many of these folktales focus on Anansi the spider, the popular trickster character of Ashanti folklore, who serves alternately as hero, villain, moral inspiration, and comic relief. Courlander, who collected these stories as they were told to him in Ghana, narrates with a direct and simple style that allows everyone to enjoy the stories, just as the Ashanti people have for hundreds of years.

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