Reviews

This page gathers the responses to Dr. Kapchits’s books and to his work. Where the text of a review was received from the author, it is published here in full and as received: the author obtained the reviewers’ consent to publication, and nothing in the texts has been changed. Copyright remains with the reviewers and their publications; each item names its source. Where only a bibliographic record exists, the item is given with its details and a summary. Until 6 September 2026 this page carried summaries in place of the texts; those summaries are kept in the project archive.

Reviews of the books

B. W. Andrzejewski

Review of: G. L. Kapchits. Somali Proverbs and Sayings in Somali and Russian with Russian Equivalents. Moscow: Nauka, 1983. 283 pp. Published in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. XLIX, Part 2, 1986, pp. 420–422. The text is not in the archive; a summary follows.

The doyen of Somali studies judged the Moscow edition first of all by its scale: a corpus of more than a thousand items, which he called the largest ever published — “Kapchits’s collection, which contains over a thousand items, is the largest ever published” (B. W. Andrzejewski). The reviewer dwells on the scholarly side of the work: its critical treatment of the existing documentation, its discernment in handling oral sources, and the author’s ability to enlist the cooperation of many Somalis, among them genuine connoisseurs of their own folklore who helped with difficult points of interpretation and with cultural background. He singles out the accuracy of the Russian translations, which carefully preserve the imagery of the originals, together with the apparatus that supports them — the annotations and the glossary of Somali terms and proper names in the appendices. The one significant omission from the survey of earlier publications, and an unavoidable one, is the collection by Maxamed Shire Maxamed, dated 1974 but, as far as the reviewer could establish, available in Somali bookshops only in 1983.

The substantive criticisms are few. The note on Khadar is judged too short to be of any use to the reader: it would have been worth explaining the miraculous powers that popular belief attributes to him, allowing him to come to the rescue even in hopeless situations. Andrzejewski also questions the note in which the Somali xalaal and xaraam are equated with the Russian terms for food permitted and forbidden during Lent: the rules of conduct differ between Muslims and Christians, and the equation produces what he calls a semantic short circuit. He rates highly the analytical second part of the book, where Kapchits applies G. L. Permyakov’s structuralist paremiology to the Somali material: the framework brings order into what would otherwise remain a shapeless mass of isolated items and can serve as a heuristic device in the search for further material. The book is useful to linguists as well, since it attests archaic grammatical forms that exclude focus indicators in declarative sentences — such forms account for 7 per cent of the corpus. The review closes with the wish for an English edition, since most scholars in the field do not read Russian.

Ibraahim M. Deeq on the 1998 dictionary

“Qaamuuska Maahmaahyadu waa Qiimo Gal” — on: Qaamuuska Maahmaahyada Soomaaliyeed / The Dictionary of Somali Proverbs. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, 1998. 206 pp. Published in: Somalitalk, 12 September 2002; reprinted as “Qaamuuska Maahmaahyada” in the anthology KAYDSO: Qoraalladii Warsidaha BADSO 2014–2017, pp. 418–421. → Full text, in Somali

Aliqeyr M. Nur, Oslo

“The Best Book on Somali Proverbs” — on: Soomaali been ma maahmaahdo / Somalis do not lie in proverbs. Ponte Invisibile, 2012. Dated 22 August 2012, Oslo, Norway. → Full text

Cabdiraxmaan Faarax “Barwaaqo”

Review in Somali of: Faaliyihii la bilkeyday: Sheekaxariirooyin Soomaaliyeed / A Soothsayer Tested: Somali Folktales. Compiled and translated by G. L. Kapchits. The Way publishers, Moscow, 2006. → Full text, in Somali

Maxamed Xasan “Alto”

Article in Somali on the Somali Week Festival 2011 in London and Dr. Kapchits’s participation in it. The festival ran from 22 to 30 October 2011 at Oxford House, Bethnal Green, London; the theme of that year was literary translation. The text is not in the archive; a summary follows.

The author describes the 2011 festival as the strongest in the London series begun in 2004: the theme was literary translation, a large number of translated books were presented, and the festival worked together with the Poetry Translation Centre and its director, the poet Sarah Maguire, which prepared translations of selected poems by the invited poets. Among the guests who came from Africa, North America and Europe, “Alto” singles out Dr. Kapchits — an expert in Somali culture, folktales, proverbs and grammar, who has given more than forty years to the Somali language and worked for many years in the Somali section of Moscow Radio: “Waa ruugcaddaa looga dambeeyo afka, dhaqanka iyo hiddaha Soomaalida” — on matters of Somali language, culture and tradition he is the final authority (Maxamed Xasan “Alto”).

On the Sunday evening Kapchits read from his own writings and spoke about the wisdom, imagery and beauty of the Somali language — about the density, the allegory and the figurative texture of proverbs, sayings and folktales — and, in the author’s account, the audience received the lecture warmly. At the closing event on 30 October he addressed the gathering with an appeal to preserve the Somali language and to teach it to children growing up abroad, thanked the organisers, and ended by speaking of the peace the Somalis lack, citing proverbs about concord among brothers.

Giorgio Banti

Review of: Sentence particles in the Somali language and their usage in proverbs. Shaker Verlag, Aachen, 2005. Published in: Aethiopica: International Journal of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies, No. 11, 2008. → Original file (PDF)

Adan Makina on the Modern Dictionary of Somali Proverbs

Two reviews of: Qaamuuska Casriga ah ee Maahmaahda Soomaaliyeed / A Modern Dictionary of Somali Proverbs. Laashin, Katrineholm, 2020. In Somali: WardheerNews, 18 October 2020. In English: WardheerNews, 6 December 2020. → Full text, in Somali · Full text, in English

Cabdirisaaq Baraag on the Modern Dictionary of Somali Proverbs

“Gorfayn Buug” — on the 2020 dictionary. Undated, autumn 2020; the place of publication is not named in the text. → Full text, in Somali

Caliqeyr M. Nuur on the Modern Dictionary of Somali Proverbs

“Wixii iiga baxay” — on the 2020 dictionary, with a note on the mixing of dialects. October 2020; the place of publication is not named in the text. The reviewer is the Aliqeyr M. Nur of the 2012 and 2025 reviews. → Full text, in Somali

Peter Unseth

Review of: G. Kapchits. Qaamuuska Casriga Ah ee Maahmaahda Soomaaliyeed / A Modern Dictionary of Somali Proverbs. Laashin, 2020. 347 pp. Published in: Proverbium (Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship), Vol. 39, 2022. Received 12 April 2021, accepted 10 August 2021. Licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. → Full text

Adan Makina on the folktales

Review of: Isha Cumar ka lulata / The Knocked-Out Eye of the Hyena: Somali Folk Tales. Hiil Press, 2022. Published in: WardheerNews, 21 November 2022. → Full text

Aliqeyr Mohammed Nur on the folktales

“Preserving the Traditional Stories: The Knocked-out Eye of the Hyena”. International Journal of Social Science Exceptional Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, January–February 2025, pp. 75–78. ISSN (online) 2583-8261. → Full text

Responses to the author’s articles

Cabdirisaaq Baraag, “Hubsiino hal baa la siistaa!” (2016)

WardheerNews, 27 March 2016. A reply to the author’s article Gacan gadaal ka baqaysaa geed ma goyso!; the author answered with Nin habari dhashay hal ma seegi waayo. → Full text, in Somali

Cabdiraxmaan Faarax “Barwaaqo”, “Soomaalidu been ma maahmaahdaa?” (2016)

Late 2016; the place of publication is not named in the text. On proverbs disproved by life, with reference to the author’s San Diego paper of 2007 and his note “Tooxsasho”. → Full text, in Somali

Work by colleagues

A. K. Zholkovsky. “The Somali Tale ‘A Soothsayer Tested’”

A condensed English version of the article published in Russian in the journal Narody Azii i Afriki, No. 1. Moscow, 1970. The English version appeared in: Essays in Honour of Muuse Ismaaciil Galaal. Ponte Invisibile, 2011, pp. 53–64.

This is not a review but a scholarly article by Dr. Kapchits’s teacher, devoted to the very tale that gave its title to the 2006 collection Faaliyihii la bilkeyday. Zholkovsky sets the tale apart from the rest of Somali folk prose for its philosophical content and finished form: the narration is interrupted three times by ‘acts’ in verse, which places it midway between poetry and the ordinary folktale. On pain of death a soothsayer must foretell the fate of his tribe; three times a serpent helps him, and three times he treats the serpent in a manner matching what has been predicted — in wartime he raises his sword, in the drought he withholds the promised share, in the year of plenty he brings everything he owns. In the closing monologue the serpent explains that this is not a matter of character: a person’s life echoes the structure of the world.

The analysis proceeds by the method of ‘generative poetics’: the theme is formulated as “revelation: life resembles the structure of the world” (A. Zholkovsky), and the article then shows step by step how the compositional decisions follow from it — the devices of simile and contrastive variation, the anti-theme of a formless, meaningless life, the splitting of the plot into a framing and a framed story, the motifs of contract, order and reward, and finally the sudden turn that makes the closing pronouncement not a moral tacked on to the tale but its denouement.

A. G. Belova. Report on the conference “5000 Years of Semito-Hamitic Languages in Asia and Africa”

Journal Vostok (Oriens), 2011, No. 1, pp. 137–142.

A survey of the international conference held on 22–24 July 2010 at the Free University of Berlin. Dr. Kapchits’s paper on the dialectal division of Somali is mentioned on p. 141 — an independent confirmation of his participation.

Tributes

Khaliil Cabdiraxmaan X. Xasan and six colleagues: “Dr. Georgi Kapchits: Aqoonyahan Abaalmarin Innaga Mudan” (2017)

WardheerNews, 6 August 2017 (© WardheerNews). In Somali. With statements by Maxamed Daahir Afrax, Siciid Jaamac Xuseen, Cabdiraxmaan Faarax Barwaaqo, Idiris Maxamed Cali, Aadan Makina and C/kariim C/raxmaan X. Xasan. → Full text, in Somali

A book about Kapchits (2022)

Abaal Raaga Rag Baa Leh by Cabdiraxmaan C. Faarax ‘Guri Barwaaqo’ (Hiil Press) — a collection of articles, interviews and appraisals of Kapchits’s contribution to Somali studies, presented to him by Somali colleagues. The author died on 3 March 2023; Kapchits’s obituary for him is in the project archive.

In March 2024 WardheerNews awarded Kapchits a certificate as Best Foreign Speaker — Expert in Somali Language (signed by Dr. Adan Makina, editor and head of the reviews and interviews section).

A dedication from Wolfgang Mieder

Wolfgang Mieder — professor at the University of Vermont and the field’s leading paremiologist — dedicated to Kapchits his annual International Bibliography of New and Reprinted Proverb Collections, which carries the line “For Georgi Kapchits” above the opening paragraph. The copy in the archive is the instalment the author labels as Proverbium 2018; the volume number is not printed on it.

See also: Articles, Monographs.