The London Jungle Book

Visual travelogue from a Gond tribal artist reverses the anthropological gaze, and re-envisions the great metropolis.

This new and fully re-designed edition of the now-classic book marks the tenth anniversary of Bhajju Shyam’s momentous journey to London, U.K. Bhajju Shyam, a celebrated and award-winning artist from the Gond tribe in central India, was commissioned to paint the walls of an Indian restaurant in London. He spent two months in the city, and it was the first time he encountered a western metropolis. The book that emerged from his journey is a visual travelogue that both mimics and subverts the typical colonial encounter.

With radical innocence and great sophistication, Bhajju brings the signs of the Gond forest to bear on the city, turning London into an exotic jungle, a clever beastiary. The London Underground becomes a sinuous snake, Big Ben transforms into a rooster crowing the time, and an airplane — the first Bhajju ever encountered — is compared to an elephant miraculously flying through the air. It is rare to encounter a truly original vision that is capable of startling us into reexamining familiar sights. By breathing the ancient spirit of wonder back into the act of travel, The London Jungle Book does just that.