The book under review not only highlights the centrality of fieldwork in anthropology but also the ways in which the entry into Moroccan culture can generate lasting dialogues with the self and others. As Kevin Dwyer states in his afterword, Encountering Morocco adds a new dimension to the anthropological canon: ‘In bringing center stage ethnographic research as a transformative experience, the book is innovative in focusing on an aspect hitherto taken for granted and unexplored: fieldwork as a transformative rite of passage.’

The book gathers some of the best anthropological specialists on Morocco whose encounters with the country have not always been easy but were nevertheless paths to cultural understanding. Interestingly, the high quality and ground-breaking views on anthropological practice in Morocco that this book offers will probably trigger (self)-reaction, criticism, and response from the growing number of local anthropologists. The volume is indeed a ‘treasure’ of otherwise inaccessible personal views that could foster cultural understanding in the other direction as well. A masterpiece of immense value to both Morocco specialists and the broader spectrum researchers in North African humanities and social sciences, the organization of the book reflects the overall manner in which fieldwork is undertaken. While the initial chapters focus on the first rapport phase, the middle ones focus on the reflection phase, and the last ones on the construction of facilitating relationships. The afterword situates the chapters in historical and disciplinary context, elevating the book an engagement with both Morocco and the discipline. It also interweaves the thematic threads that link a remarkably coherent volume.

As the editors underscore in the introduction to the book, the collected authors share a transformative experience of understanding Morocco through fieldwork; each contributor expresses his/her unique experience. The personal and the professional intermingle in this understanding. Charlotte van den Hout opens the volume with surprise at the unexpected use of French in a psychiatric hospital, which led her to reflect on the complex use of language to express class consciousness in a context where tradition and modernity cohabit. She points to the linguistic complexity of Morocco as one of its deep but poorly understood characteristics. Karen Rignall's chapter follows with a similar initial surprise at how her interviewees in Morocco's deep south dealt with the notions of family and work. David McMurray takes back the complex and poorly understood issue of class markers and status relations with respect to attire and underlines how these have been impacted by external factors such as migration. Emilio Spadola's effort to establish ‘rapport’ between himself and Mohamed in Fez developed into a life-transforming experience that ended in his conversion to Islam in great part as a result of his friend's forgiveness of the author's mistakes. Katherine Hoffman's chapter addresses another aspect of developing rapport: its difficulty in a context where suspicion, secrecy, and withholding knowledge are often constructed and fostered in the populations by local authorities. The difficulties encountered during fieldwork nevertheless sustained both the anthropologist's curiosity and that of her informants.

Paul Silverstein's timely chapter shows how the emerging Berber identity is partly the work of anthropologists. The author realized how his activist informants grasped many of the tools of anthropologists as part of their political engagement to gain space in the Moroccan sphere of authority. This led the author to interrogate the anthropologist's notion of legitimate knowledge in a context where the spaces of home and the field overlap. Rachel Newcomb takes up the theme of rapport from the angle of how gender and religion complicate the private and the professional. Jamila Bargach, a Moroccan anthropologist who returned to Morocco after a long absence, did fieldwork in a NGO devoted to unwed mothers. Having to measure what extremely marginalized women gained – freedom – was an experience that left the anthropologist with deep questions about her own understanding of even her own culture. For Deborah Kapchan, the path to cultural understanding was accompanied by artistic curiosity, linguistic sensitivity, and profound spirituality. Starting as a student, then researcher, then wife and mother, the author learnt to work with empathy, searching and finding it in the local notion of lkhater and the changing meaning of home.

David Crawford's chapter reflects on his return to Morocco after marrying and having children. He explores the impact that his children had on the way he was perceived, what fathering entailed for his knowledge production, and the new borders he had to cross. Finally, Kevin Dwyer's afterword pulls together the deep threads that run through the chapters: bringing the little ‘tasks’ that accompany fieldwork from the margins of anthropological discourse to the center stage, opening the door to new venues of research. In sum, innovative, bold, and challenging, Encountering Morocco will certainly not be the end of the beautiful and deeply human story that links Morocco to its American anthropologists.