Funerary practices are by far the largest lifecycle rituals across most of the African continent, in contrast to many other parts of the world, where weddings take that prize. The centrality of death and its connected practices to society as a whole is made clear through these fascinating essays by two historians. The chapters range across several topics (some were previously published in journals) but they give a good overall sense of how death is interconnected with other topics, including politics, sex and economics. The reader is first taken back to the late nineteenth century, when the White Fathers moved into what is now northern Zambia and began an assertive effort to convert powerful Bemba chiefs, and thus the rest of the population. They eventually succeeded, and this complex story involves priestly politicking and the attraction of a religion that offered solace around the time of death instead of danger and fear (although the ritual attraction of Christian funeral rites is perhaps understated here), along with tensions when missionaries tried to control the dancing and drinking surrounding death, establish cemeteries away from family compounds, and break ritual connections between sex and death. The latter theme is also present in the second chapter, which includes a fine discussion of the impact of Christianity on death rites and on ideas about death, including the attraction of the idea of heaven. Here Megan Vaughan, through her use of anthropologists’ past work on Central Africa, insightfully addresses the impact of the changes in death rites on the broader populace, not just on the elite or chiefly figures.

The next three chapters by Walima Kalusa take us into the Zambian Copperbelt and discuss how practices of death and Christianity were integrated into miners’ lives. Mining and other economic processes meant a rising class of African elites, which brought a tension between the traditional rulers and their colonial allies, who had an interest in maintaining indirect rule. The miners creatively incorporated Christian practices and beliefs into their death rites, which helped ‘broaden their interpersonal comprehension of death’ (p. 117) beyond that of the lineage. This universalizing aspect of Christianity also had repercussions for nationalism, as miners transcended ethnic divisions to create new identities that eventually led to political movements, the focus of Chapter 5. Kalusa details here how cemeteries served as a crucial location for the emergent political parties in the late 1950s. The funerals of political leaders became places of political formation, which overlapped with their role in precolonial times. The importance of funerals is also underlined by the effort and expense Africans devoted to them, to the condemnation of the more utilitarian Europeans (Chapter 4). Here we see the rise in the cost of funerals as new elites displayed their status, thereby creating tension with traditional elites such as chiefs; this is a process one can see across the continent. However, it also created divisions between elites and the majority of the less well-off population.

The next three chapters deal with the killing of a European woman in 1960 during nationalist agitation, and then the issues of suicide and maternal mortality. As in the earlier chapters, issues of nationalism and politics arise, along with religious notions of personhood and ties to health. Chapter 7 on suicide is fascinating but a bit thin analytically, as it could have drawn on work such as that of Richard Shweder to better understand the particular moral orders or offences that both prompt and are created by suicide. The last chapter focuses on the recent deaths of Malawian leaders and their memorialization, revealing both innovations but also underlying continuities. The use of ‘big houses’ (mausoleums) is new, but the existence of rumours and uncertainty over the cause of death is not, including the rumours of witchcraft – although this time they involve the prophecy of a Nigerian preacher popular on Malawian TV. This juxtaposition of diverse elements offers a satisfactory conclusion to the book.

Because of the importance of funerary practices in sub-Saharan Africa, there is much to be learned by systematically examining such practices across the continent, and how and why they have changed. Joël Noret and I took a step towards that process with Funerals in Africa, but it is quite an enormous task. This regional study is a valuable addition to the literature, especially because it highlights the commonalities and tensions in societies that are now more diverse, religiously and otherwise, than they were a hundred years ago.