This innovative book provides an original approach to the analysis of the representation of myth, ritual, and 'magic' in African literature. Emphasizing the ambivalent nature of the sacred, it advances work on the religious dimension of canonical African texts and attends to the persistence of pre-colonial cultures in postcolonial spaces.

MARK MATHURAY is at present a lecturer in the English Department of Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, where previously he held a Leverhulme Early Careers Research Fellowship. He studied and taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and received a PhD from Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. He has published various articles on religious discourses in African literature.