Books by Manuel Joao Ramos

Sketches and local legends are interwoven in this travelogue, on the Ethiopian Central Highlands, exploring the Portuguese architectural legacy, near ruins now but with echoes of its lost splendour still remaining in the Amhara oral tradition. This book perfectly illustrates and illuminates how drawing can play a more active part in ethnography.

The work offers detailed analysis and anthropological interpretation of a body of Christian medieval texts, which confirm the existence of a mythological discourse based on the biblical narratives. Essays in Christian Mythology focuses on Prester John, an imaginary oriental sovereign fabled to have offered to establish an alliance with the West in order to liberate the Holy Land. This intriguing work reviews the symbolic dualism in medieval Christianity and the symbolic relations between Christ as heir of the Heavenly Kingdom and the Devil as the "Prince of this World."