THE AFRICAN DREAM: Visions of Love and...

THE AFRICAN DREAM: Visions of Love and Sorrow: The Art of John Muafangejo by Orde Levinson (Thames and Hudson: $14.95; 120 pp.). Levinsono has assembled the first book devoted to the lino cuts of the noted Namibian graphic artist, John Muafangejo, who died in 1987--probably due to manic-depressive illness. A member of the Kwanyama tribe, his work reflects the mingling of ancestral stories with Bible stories learned from Christian missionaries and observations of daily life in southwestern Africa. Scholars debate the relationships between his straightforward images and early David Hockney drawings, Romanesque friezes and the paintings of Henri Rousseau, but their immediate appeal is indisputable.