Rajasthan is India's tradition-rich northwest royal province, home of maharajas, of imposing forts and grand palaces, and 3,000 year-old settlements. So it is also a land rich in street color, popular pageantry and a unique ethnic design language. Impressions of Rajasthan takes photography lovers across one of the most inspirational regions on the Indian subcontinent, offering a unique look at the painted imagination of India with murals of pure pattern, mandalic abstractions and figurative story-panels. It is a rich, distinct decorative tradition-often as humorous as it is pious-woven into everyday visual life.

Morandi's camera also masterfully captures the everyday lifestyle of contemporary Rajasthan, in particular, Rajasthani women who are the carriers of this pattern language tradition: chatting in small groups, buying fruit at the market, and painting their homes with murals in which religion, history, and politics are described in a brushstroke.

Carisse and Gérard Busquet have lived and worked in Nepal for years and are the authors of a book on the colors and light of Nepal.

The state of Rajasthan in northwestern India is a land of contrasts, ranging from fertile farmlands to scorching desert sands. The varied landscape is home to a complex society of Hindus, Muslims, Jains, and Sikhs from numerous castes and clans. When feudalism ended in Rajasthan in 1947 with India's independence, artists, dancers, mimes, percussionists, singers, and acrobats lost their patrons-the Rajput nobility-and became street performers or artists-for-hire. These two books explore how art has survived in Rajasthan since that time. Impressions of Rajasthan, the first English-language publication from the Busquets, longtime residents of India, offers a balanced view of Rajasthani society, from the Dalit-formerly called "untouchables"-to the Zamindar Mina, wealthy landowners who are vegetarian Hindus. Rajasthan's geographic and human diversity spawned its vibrant artistic traditions, the guardians of which are the women. Impressions includes colorful pictures of women decorating their homes, drawing the sacred diagrams (or "mandana") to propitiate the gods, painting pictograms representing rites of passage, and executing traditional wall paintings called thapa. Two hundred magnificent full-color illustrations enliven the in-depth study of these art forms and their long history, symbolism, techniques, themes, and motifs. Also portrayed is the work of male artists, public artists for hire who prepare themselves spiritually through meditation just as the women ritually prepare their courtyards with cow dung, ocher, and water before painting the walls. Van Lynden's first publication, Rajasthan, is the perfect complement to Impressions. Whereas Impressions is more scholarly, with historical, cultural, and anthropological content (as well as a helpful glossary and a brief English-language bibliography), Rajasthan is more personal, almost spiritual. Van Lynden is a Belgian bookbinder and artist who has traveled frequently to India, and her diary-like work presents her impressions in few words but an abundant number of photographic collages. (There are 350 in all.) These two books are highly recommended for libraries wishing to enhance their non-Western collections.-Nancy Mactague, Aurora Univ. Lib., IL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.