Spellbound: Inside West Africa's Witch Camps by Karen Palmer - October 2010

New York: Free Press. Hardcover. First Edition (stated) / full number line. October 2010. As New book in a Near Fine jacket. Minor shelfwear to jacket corners. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. 247 pages.

Karen Palmer takes readers deep inside a shadowy layer of rural African society in one of northern Ghana's witch camps, where hundreds of banished women struggle to survive under the watchful eye of a powerful wizard. Palmer arrived at the Gambaga witch camp with an outsiders sense of outrage, believing it was little more than a dumping ground for difficult women. Soon, however, she encountered stories she could not explain: a woman who confessed shed attacked a girl given to her as a sacrifice; another one desperately trying to rid herself of the witchcraft she believed helped her kill dozens of people. As the sheen of the exotic wore off, Palmer witnessed the way witchcraft preyed on peoples fears and resentments. Witchcraft could be a comfort in times of distress, a way of explaining a crippling drought or the inexplicable loss of a child. It was a means of predicting the unpredictable and controlling the uncontrollable. But witchcraft was also a tool for social control. In this vivid, startling work of first-person reportage, Palmer sheds light on the plight of women in a rarely seen corner of the world.