“It has taken long in coming—evidence of scholars in love with love in Africa. This well researched and compelling book is a welcome signpost and snippet view of how scholarship on Africa can be enriched through greater attention to the theme of love.”

Francis B. Nyamnjoh, author of Married But Available

“This is a breakthrough volume on a remarkably neglected topic. The contributors include many of the top scholars in the field, and the chapters offer wonderfully insightful and revealing analyses of a broad range of ethnographic and historical cases. The masterful introduction by Cole and Thomas offers an overview of the topic that will help set a new research agenda for studies of intimacy, romance, and affect on the continent.”

James Ferguson, Stanford University

“Love in Africa sets two scholarly milestones. First, it demands that students of Africa confront the full spectrum of human emotion in the continent. Second, and speaking more universally, it shows how love, while experienced in the most deeply personal of ways, invariably arises from economic and social circumstance. Drawing on everything from the improvisation of new forms of love from newspaper advice columns, Bollywood, and the European colonial legacy to the monetary exchanges that so powerfully shape emotion, this unflinching book will win an immediate place on the shelves of Africanists as well as social scientists in general.”

Caroline Bledsoe, Northwestern University