An anthropologist’s memoir of apprenticing himself to various sorcerers in Niger in the 1970s and 80s, this book has great material to work with, but is written in a rather dry, academic style. I had the sense the author spends all his reading time immersed in academic works and perhaps hadn’t actua...
Niger.This memoir/ethnography was better than I anticipated. Stoller, an anthropologist-in-training, returns to Niger (where he was previously in the Peace Corps) to conduct field work. He winds up being mentored by a series of sorcerers. What I particularly enjoyed was his own coming of age as an a...