Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa » (1st Edition)

Luise White is Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida. Her previous book, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (1990), won the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association.

"It took courage, determination, and a clear mind to make us see unexpected aspects of colonial history, not beneath, but through, stories of bloodsuckers and cannibals. Luise White's book convincingly demonstrates that these tales of the fantastic can be sources of history-writing, giving us access to realities that are ignored by those who uncritically accept the injunctions of scientific realism."—Johannes Fabian, author of Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire

"Luise White is as usual stimulating and provocative. This book on vampires reverses strong mythologies and will make a significant difference in African studies."—Valentin Mudimbe, author of The Idea of Africa

"A brilliant, eccentric, original book. It is deeply researched, intellectually engaged, and morally serious. It deserves a wide readership." —Thomas Laqueur, author of Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud

Times Literary Supplement

White argues convincingly that these stories, with their wide distribution across the continent, are, in fact, modern histories. [She has] produced [a] courageous, scholarly and imaginative book.