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In what appears to be a revision of his PhD dissertation, Mathuray (English, Royal Holloway, Univ. of London, UK) brings the fields of anthropology, sociology, and history into play in order to investigate versions of the sacred in selected works by Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ben Okri, and J. M. Coetzee. In a closely reasoned, detailed study, the author contests the "disenchantment" or waning of magic in African society that Anthony Appiah identifies as a mark of the experience of colonialism and of Africa's ongoing interaction with the West. Instead, Mathuray theorizes the sacred--as it is represented through myth, ritual, and magic--as an ambivalent force in these varied texts, a force that reinforces and contests power structures and continues into the present to inform traditional modes of knowledge and imported beliefs and practices, even as it appears in new forms in the works of younger African writers. Mathuray's coinage of phrases such as "alienated realism," "sacred realism," and "stalled sublime" is only a partial reflection of his innovative line of reasoning in this important contribution to the study of African literature. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. K. Vincent Acadia University