While offering new insights into the resurgence of chiefs (indigenous sovereigns) in contemporary Africa, the Politics of Custom also presents an illuminating complex counterpoint of the interplay of tradition and modernity, showcasing that chiefship is neither wholly of the state nor of the customary, but is always interlinked. As the editors point out in their introduction, contemporary African chiefship is narrated in two ways: one does so in the language of continuity, cyclicity, and reproduction, of the timeless past returned; the other situates it in linear historical time, in trajectory, transformation, and agency. …This book is insightful and a pleasure to read. It would appeal to anyone interested in traditional institutions, contemporary African politics, customary chieftaincies or democracy and democratisation….[It] makes a great contribution to our understanding of the resurgence of chieftaincy and indigenous power in postcolonial Africa.