"In this book, anthropologists Peter Geschiere and Rogers Orock examine the moral panic that engulfed Cameroon and Gabon, beginning in the mid-2000s, over a perceived rise in homosexuality. Setting out to uncover the origins of the conspiratorial narratives that fed into this obsession, they argue that people's fears were grounded in long-standing beliefs about the entanglement of same-sex practices, Freemasonry, and illicit enrichment. Specifically, these narratives fixated on high-ranking Masonic figures thought to lure younger men into sex in exchange for professional advancement. The authors' thorough account shows that attacks on elites as homosexual predators corrupting the nation became a powerful outlet for mounting populist anger against the excesses and corruption of the ruling classes. Unraveling these tensions, Geschiere and Orock present us with a genealogy of Freemasonry that takes us from London through Paris to Francophone Africa, revealing along the way how the colonial past continues to haunt the present"--