Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials

**National Bestseller** **A *New Yorker* Best Book of 2024** **A “thought-provoking and timely” ( *The Times* , London) global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate a pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history.** This “inventive and compelling” ( *The Times Literary Supplement* , London) work of social history travels through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized, and then reimagined as gendered persecution, *Witchcraft* takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance. Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, *Witchcraft* is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.