Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan

By Vincent Crapanzano

Book Overview

Tuhami is an illiterate Moroccan tilemaker who believes himself married to a camel-footed she-demon. A master of magic and a superb story-teller, Tuhami lives in a dank, windowless hovel near the kiln where he works. Nightly he suffers visitations from the demons and saints who haunt his life, and he seeks, with crippling ambivalence, liberation from 'A'isha Qandisha, the she-demon.

In a sensitive and bold experiment in interpretive ethnography, Crapanzano presents Tuhami's bizarre account of himself and his world. In so doing, Crapanzano draws on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and symbolism to reflect upon the nature of reality and truth and to probe the limits of anthropology itself. Tuhami has become one of the most important and widely cited representatives of a new understanding of the whole discipline of anthropology.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226118711
• ISBN13: 9780226118710
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating

I have actually met another Moroccan who claimed a similar experience. This is an interesting cultural story. The experience is one that people in Morocco that I met will say they have heard of, but it is extremely difficult to get anyone to talk about it any further. If the subject is even moderately interesting to you, buy this book.

Tuhami is a well written book about an interesting guy.

If you like Moroccans, then you'll love Tuhami. This book looks into the belief system that shapes Tuhami's life and is readable and enjoyable as well as very informative.