‘Tanzanian literature is primarily oral. Major oral literary forms include folktales, poems, riddles, proverbs, and songs. The majority of the oral literature in Tanzania that has been recorded is in Swahili, though each of the country’s languages has its own oral tradition. The country’s oral literature is currently declining because of changes in family structure that make transmission of oral literature more difficult and because of the devaluation of oral literature that has accompanied Tanzania’s development. Tanzania’s written literary tradition is still relatively undeveloped; Tanzania does not have a strong reading culture, and books are often expensive and hard to come by. Most Tanzanian literature is in Swahili or English. Major figures in Tanzanian written literature include Shaaban Robert, Muhammed Said Abdulla, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Penina Mlama.
