Klaas van Walraven, historian at the African Studies Centre, is the author of The Yearning for Relief: A History of the Sawaba Movement in Niger (Brill, 2013). He is currently working on a biography of Barthélémy Boganda.

• AcknowledgementsList of Illustrations Notes on ContributorsPrologue: Reflections on Historiography and Biography and the Study of Africa’s PastKlaas van WalravenPart 1: Methodological Insights1 Human SymbolsThe Biographical Pursuit and the Language of Symbolism in Contemporary South AfricaLindie Koorts2 ‘Your Surroundings Don’t Make You; You Must Rise above all that’The Home in Life Histories as Site of Resistance to Racial Violence, Cape Town, South AfricaElena Moore3 From Life Histories to Social HistoryNarrating Social Change through Multiple BiographiesIva PešaPart 2: Persons in Transitions4 The Effervescence of Individual Life: Cornelius Badu, Born 1847 in Elmina, Gold CoastPaul Glen Grant5 The Leopard that Came to Laikom: Michael Timneng in Colonial CameroonJacqueline de Vries6 Underground Struggles: The Early Life of Jack HodgsonDuncan MoneyPart 3: Discursive Worlds7 Binding Words: Student Biographical Narratives and Religious ConversionMorgan Robinson8 A Muslim Boy in Sunday SchoolAbdullah Abdurahman’s Early Childhood and Education in Cape Town at the End of the Nineteenth CenturyEve Wong9 Barthélémy Boganda between Charisma and CosmologyInterpretive Perspectives on Biography in Equatorial African HistoryKlaas van Walraven10 A Road not Taken? The Biography of Laurent Kabila (1939-2001)Erik KennesIndex