The Night Life of Trees is an exquisite hand-bound and screen-printed book of paintings by three of the finest artists of the Gond tribal art tradition. The Gonds, a tribe of central India, are traditionally forest dwellers. They believe that trees are hard at work during the day providing shelter and nourishment to all. Only when night falls can they finally rest, and their spirits reveal themselves. These luminous spirits are captured in The Night Life of Trees, a fascinating and haunting foray into the Gond imagination. Each painting is accompanied by its own poetic tale, myth or lore, narrated by the artists themselves, which recreate the familiarity and awe with which the Gond people view the natural world. Screen-printed by hand on black paper, every page of this book is an original print. Each book in this limited second edition of 1,000 is individually numbered.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Tara Publishing, a commune of artists, writers and designers producing handmade books in Chennai (formerly Madras), India, have created a glowingly mysterious and charming volume that combines mythology from central India's Gond tribe with illustrations from three renowned Gond artists who will appear at museums in several U.S. cities this year. Hand screened onto black paper, the colorful, intricately detailed illustrations are almost psychedelic, in some ways reminiscent of Australian Aboriginal drawings. But the forms are recognizably Indian, and despite stylistic differences among the three artists, the pictures reveal a strong and unique Gond artistic tradition where animals, insects and humans merge with and emerge from the trees. There are magical stories about the protective spirits of the Sambar tree, and the serpent and root-entwined snake goddesses holding the earth together. But the practical uses of trees figure here as well: the wood of the thorny Nagphani tree is hard enough to use as a crowbar, and its sap heals sore eyes; the Ganja (marijuana) bush and the Mahua (alcohol) tree are said to be husband and wife. This mingling of the mythic, mundane and poetic gives an alluring glimpse into an integrative worldview that's in poignant contrast to the fragmented postmodern world. (June 1)Correction: In the review of Endgame, by Derrick Jensen (Reviews, May 8), the final sentence should read, "But he has become so disgusted with what he calls 'civilization' that he has more compassion for the salmon than for his fellow humans."

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.