A Timorese woman demonstrates the technique used to spin yarn.

Whether inscribing them on a clay tablet, publishing them between the covers of a book, compressing them on CD-ROM, or enshrining them in an oral heritage, people of all cultures delight in telling tales. Many thousands of years before the story of Gilgamesh was first recorded on tablets by the Babylonians, human beings were quite certainly entertaining, enlightening, and instructing one another through the medium of oral narratives.

Today, people all over the world continue to transmit the collective wisdom of their ancestors by word of mouth. In East Timor, a country occupying half of an island three hundred miles north of Australia, storytelling is a major art form and a pleasurable way of inculcating cultural values from one generation to the next. The tales, which also help the local population comprehend their world, are told by a storytelling specialist known as lia na'in, or “lord of the word.” This prestigious title reflects the storytellers’ importance as living repositories and transmitters of those values the Timorese people venerate.