Ouri. Images in Wonderland. Rock art in Eastern Tibesti. Ediz. illustrata

Ouri, Images in Wonderland marks a remarkable advance in publications of prehistoric rock art in the Ouri plain (Eastern Tibesti, Chad). In the early 1990s, the Tibesti was again accessible after a 20-years-long period of unrest. At that time, the European experts of African rock art were scarcely aware of the exceptionality of the Ouri art, only known through the publication of a restricted number of papers. The author Roberta Simonis and her collaborators offer a compendium of the research carried out by Aldo Boccazzi, Donatella Calati, Adriana Ravenna and Sergio Scarpa Falce in the years 1993-2009, when they organised eight reconnaissance expeditions to the Ouri plain, either together or in the company of other rock art enthusiasts. Not only they revisited the decorated sites published by the early explorers, but reported a large number of new findings. Their observations and photographic documents form the groundwork of this book and the quality of András Zboray’s digital photographs helps improve the comprehension of the unique art of this remote part of the Sahara.The book includes two maps and over 1600 figures, with colour photographs, DStretch treatments, tracings of single figures and several overall pictures showing the complexity of the larger painted panels. The volume is divided into 23 chapters of unequal length, each dealing with a different area of the Ouri plain.