Description: "Only recently has there emerged a genre of personal memoirs dealing with fieldwork experience that permits the exploration of the trials, intimacies, and the psychic desires played out both by anthropologists and their subjects. Edith Turner's account is among the best."- Choice "A book that provokes thought about unconsidered topics is always a prize. . . . Edith Turner's very special book, which seeks to record thoughts more poetically than ethnographically."- Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly "It is a haunting book, tracing Edith Turner's development from Marxist-dialectic studenthood to nostalgic widowhood in an African setting. . . . In the spirit of participant observation - Turner did not just observe but also underwent the complex and often lurid rituals of Mdembu life; she has squirted maternal milk at strange deities, joined in wild dances and been plastered with medicines."- Times Literary Supplement "Any who want a title which reaches beyond impersonal observation to capture the essense and meaning of Africa will find this an engrossing account."- Midwest Book Review

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