This impressive book, edited by Zoubir, director of research in geopolitics at Euromed Marseille, and Amirah-Fernández, of the Autonomous University of Madrid and senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute for International and Strategic Studies in Madrid, provides the reader with ample coverage of contemporary developments in the Maghreb, that North African region consisting of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania.

The book opens with a foreword by William B. Quandt, University of Virginia, who rightly notes that “with a population of around 85 million, this region provides relief from the horrific events of the eastern Arab world, while nonetheless reminding us of how challenging the processes of economic and political reform can be.”

The volume provides a broad range of important and up-to-date information and analysis on the reality of life in the North African region. The book offers a deep and wide ranging analysis of issues relating to each of the five separate countries and also looks at regional and international relations, including such topics as the relations between France and the Maghreb, and the politics of Berber (Amazigh) identity in Algeria and Morocco.

One can find a relevant discussion related to almost any geopolitical or regional issue of recent years in North Africa: security, geopolitics, Islamism, democracy, terrorism (including reverberations from “the global war on terror”), migration to the European Union, intra-Maghreb migration, intra-Maghreb relations (including the failure of the Arab Maghreb Union), the challenge of multilateralism in managing bilateral disputes in the Maghreb, and Europe’s Mediterranean policies, putting a special weight on France and Spain.

North Africa fills a vacuum in the scholarly Maghreb literature and is a must-read for anyone wishing better to understand the region. Most of its components stand on their own and can be used in university studies.