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Book | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | In sorcery's shadow: a memoir of apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger |
Authors: | Stoller, Paul Olkes, Cheryl |
Year: | 1987 |
Pages: | 235 |
Language: | English |
City of publisher: | Chicago; London |
Publisher: | The University of Chicago Press |
ISBN: | 0226775429; 0226775437 |
Geographic term: | Niger |
Subjects: | Songhai witchcraft |
Abstract: | This book is the memoir of Paul Stoller's sojourn among sorcerers in western Niger. In 1976 he returned to the area where he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer and began his doctoral research among the millet-farming Songhay people. After six months he discovered that he had been lied to systematically by his informants. Dropping his original agenda, he began to live among the Songhay in a less formal fashion. By the end of the year, he made the decision to become an apprentice to sorcerers in the hope of gaining an understanding of a hidden dimension of Songhay culture. Over the next eight years, his apprenticeship took him to the villages of Mehanna, Tillaberi and Wanzerbe. It was in Wanzerbe that, fearing for his life, he abandoned his apprenticeship in 1984. Cheryl Olkes joined her husband for several years among the Songhay. |