Chelsi West Ohueri’s Encountering Race in Albania is an ethnography of race and racialization in Albania. Based on the author’s field research in Albania and secondary literature pertaining to the history and anthropology of race in the Balkans and beyond, it is the first monograph of its kind to ask how, why, and when racialization occurs in the Albanian context.  In so doing, West Ohueri is just as engaged in interrogating Albanians’ self-ascriptions as marginalized Europeans as she is in examining the complex processes of racialization of communities such as the Roma and Egyptians. Encountering Race reads as a contemporary account of post-communist society. For example, many of the conversations West Ohueri accounts for are with Albanians who grew up in the communist period and who are adults today. Yet because she persuasively weaves the investigation of race and race-making through earlier periods of Albanian history, dating back to independence in 1912, her work is in effect a comprehensive study of encountering race in modern Albania. Candid and often very funny, the book is both touching and deeply human. Rare for its kind, the book is bold in its proposition – especially as the Albanians West Ohueri often encounters claim that Albania is “raceless”– while also remaining highly accessible. While not new, the study of race in the region and beyond remains severely under-researched. Yet West Ohueri’s exhaustive analysis, which ties together local and global processes of racialization, makes it clear that race is an everyday factor in Albanian social life.