Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History, Society

Ioan Lewis

October, 2008
Cloth, 208 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70084-9
$45.00

"This type of essential description and assessment of a culture and a history can come only from an author so permeated by his subject that writing about it flows in the smooth fashion of a natural phenomenon. If there is one clear lesson that emerges from Lewis’s precise and sweeping assessment it is that Somalia is a walking and moving exception to many rules about the nation-state. Required reading for anyone dealing with Somalia, from diplomats and journalists to NGOs and the United Nations." — Gérard Prunier, author of The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide

Related Subjects

• African Studies

About the Author

Ioan Lewis is professor emeritus of anthropology at the London School of Economics and author of Arguments with Ethnography: Comparative Approaches to History, Politics, and Religion.

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