This book of a 2010 conference explores the interaction of Ap[uleius]’ literary output with his African background (he was born in Madauros in Africa Proconsularis in the mid-120s c.e. and spent much of his professional life in Carthage), and to provide some corrective to the previous generation of scholarship (e.g. by James Tatum, Gerald Sandy and the reviewer) which sought to stress Ap.'s strong links with the Roman archaizing literary culture of the second century c.e. and the contemporary Greek ‘Second Sophistic’.

After the useful orientation of the introduction, contextualizing it within theories of Romanization and post-colonial discourse, and stressing complex cultural identity and cultural hybridity, the book's first section looks at historical contexts. Here Keith Bradley's chapter (24–34) rightly emphasizes that Ap.'s Apologia must record a real occasion (I would say with Cicero-style ex post facto editing), and shows how the archaeology and the mixed culture of the trial-location of Sabathra, and especially the evidence of the Greek magical papyri, can contribute to the work's interpretation. Carlos Noreña (35–51) points to the detailed Roman legal colour of the speech, suggesting (rightly) that the more forensic second part has received less attention than the more epideictic first part, and (more contestably) that Ap.'s intellectual virtuosity is, in the end, subordinated to his rôle as a good Roman imperial subject. Julia Gaisser (52–65) demonstrates the rôle of Africa in the transmission of Ap.'s works, plausibly stressing the importance of his fellow-Roman North Africans Lactantius, Augustine, Martianus Capella and Fulgentius. Joseph Farrell (66–84) looks at Ap.'s recent emergence into the university Latin canon against the background of the culture/canon wars of the 1980s and 1990s, and notes that Ap. is already emerging in Late Antiquity (here surely his — then fashionable — Platonism is important as well as the African emperors of the period); he is relatively sceptical about ‘African’ Latin and Ap.'s ‘African’ identity.

The second section considers cultural contexts. Here Silvia Mattiacci (87–111) provides an excellent summary of the historical debate on ‘African Latin’ and rightly points to the recent work of Jim Adams, which shows that there were Latin loan-words from African languages and one or two other lexical features (both in sub-literary texts) as well as African pronunciation of Latin, but no broad African literary style behind Ap.'s remarkable diction. She suggests that the latter may have been influenced by local rhetorical schools, but we need more evidence here (how were these different from those at Rome, for example?). Luca Graverini (112–28) looks for African colour in the Metamorphoses through Ap.'s use of the Vergilian figure of Dido, suggesting (amongst many good points) analogies between Ap.'s Hypata and Vergil's Carthage as places of diversion and entertainment (interesting) as well as between Byrrhena and Dido (even more interesting given the latter's quasi-erotic interest in her guest). Wytse Keulen (129–53) compares the careers of Ap. and Fronto, suggesting persuasively that they knew each other at least by reputation, that both play on their exotic outsider/African status and span both Greek and Roman culture, and that Lucius becomes a kind of Fronto at the end of the Met.; Ap. is interestingly seen as a ‘Ciceronian’ new man with vim and panache, Fronto as a more elegant and established ‘Caesarian’ figure. David Stone (154–73) suggests that the real complexity of identity in Ap.'s work consists not of his self-presentation but of his presentation of other characters, based not on national/ethnic considerations but on a range and combination of categories and habitual actions. Emmanuel and Nedjima Plantade (174–201) look at potential links of the story of Cupid and Psyche with Berber folktales collected in the modern period; some of the parallels are striking, but for the reviewer it is hard to let go of the Fehling thesis that modern folk versions are likely to derive from the post-classical diffusion of the literary story.

The third and final section is devoted to theoretical approaches. Daniel Selden's remarkably rich and wide-ranging chapter (206–68) argues that some key features of Ap.'s style find their origins in Afro-asiatic poetics, taking issue with Adams' restriction of these features to sub-literary texts; his argument that Ap.'s florid prose style is more like Libyac and Punic poetry than post-classical Latin prose (for example, in its use of parallel phrasing) could be countered by the idea that it indeed derives much of its colour from Latin poetry. Sonia Sabnis (271–96) suggests that Ap.'s descriptions of India reflect elements of post-colonial resistance and criticism of the usual Roman exoticizing discourse; this is an interesting view, but I would suggest that domestication of this material for a Rome-oriented audience is more important than she allows here. Richard Fletcher (297–312) points out that there is little African colour in the Platonic works, and that even when Ap. talks about his origins, the point is at least as much philosophical as ethnic, a salutary reminder that we need to consider the author's whole output in this context. Finally, Benjamin Lee (313–26) picks up the reference to Africae uiri in the transmission of the Florida and rightly points to the central significance of the work's Roman/African audience as an identifiable local élite with particular cultural concerns.

Overall, this volume succeeds in giving a higher profile than before to Ap.'s African context and cultural identity, and in advancing (if not always concluding) debate on many connected issues. Scholars should be duly grateful to the editors and contributors for a significant milestone in modern Apuleian studies.