Africa's traditional beliefs - including ancestor worship, divination and witchcraft - continue to dominate its spiritual influences. Readers in search of a better understanding of the continent will be enriched by this book's timely exploration of sub-Saharan Africa's natural philosophy. The author's meticulous research reveals that, whereas technology-driven Western societies prefer to rely largely on logical explanations, many Africans continue to obey their intuition - trusting in images, dreams and divination to rationalise misfortune and illness. African Magic explains why so many Africans understand the relationship between people and unfortunate events not through the Western concept of chance in the case of accidents, or germ theory in the case of illness, but...
Heidi Holland was a journalist and author for over thirty years. As a freelance journalist, she wrote for a wide range of international publications, including the London Sunday Times, International Herald Tribune and The Guardian. Other projects included research for leading British television documentaries. She published African Magic with Penguin Books in 2001 and co-edited From Jo’burg to Jozi in 2002. 2006 saw the release of The Colour of Murder, a book about one of South Africa’s worst mass murderers, Louis van Schoor, and in 2008 Penguin published Dinner with Mugabe, a penetrating, timely portrait of Zimbabwe’s infamous ruler. Heidi’s final book 100 Years of Struggle was published in 2012. http://www.dinnerwithmugabe.com
Read more