Book Review

Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar's In the Time of Trees and Sorrows is an acutely observed and painstakingly analyzed ethnographic exploration of Rajasthani villagers' memories and thinking about the final two decades of princely rule in the kingdom of Sawar under the British raj. Gold, a professor of religion and anthropology at Syracuse University, and Gujar, the headmaster at Government Middle School in Maganpura village in Rajasthan, have collaborated on a series of anthropological research projects over a twenty-year period. This book is their first foray into historical studies. It is inspired by the school of subaltern studies, in that it focuses upon lower-caste villagers' stories and recollections about life under the "double administration" of the Rajasthani nobility and the very distant British colonial authority; it charts its own path in that it privileges the tape-recorded memories over the archival collections of written or photographic documentary evidence. The authors' exceptionally clear and evocative writing guides the reader through the cultural meanings of selected conversation fragments and stories that emerge from the deep well of village memory.

. . .