Thanks Be to God: Prayers and Parables for Public Worship Book

This was an assigned reading that I really enjoyed. It is a collection of folktales from Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, India as told to an anthropologist (Kirin Narayan) by a local village woman (Urmila Devi Sood, or "Urmalaji" as Narayan calls her). These stories range from old wives' tales about village life, to fairytale-like legends, to tales of treachery and scandal. They are entertaining but at the same time impart a lot of information on complex subjects such as the interactions between caste, class, karma, and fate and women's roles including their responsibility for upholding izzat, or family honor.