Novel Maps

 'Anarres' and 'Urras' from The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

 'Earthsea' from Tales From Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

They're strange things, book-maps. They really appeal to me as I too spent a lot of my childhood creating maps of my many imaginary realms. Now when I see one, i'm pulled back to a very cosy  image of myself reading one, tracing the route of some questing hero or further imagining what goes on 'here' or 'there' when the storyteller is looking the other way.

I rediscovered book-maps as an adult in the novels of Ursula Le Guin, which I came to a bit late. She really goes in for them but in a restrained fashion: line-drawn, black and white outlines of continents or whole planets, perhaps the occasional mountain or swamp. There is something a bit joyless and clinical about them which makes me wonder why she bothered, to me they don't invite the curiosity or sense of adventure within her actual novels.

'The End of the World' from Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

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http://www.haruki-murakami.com/murakami_places

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On the other hand, Murakami's map from 'Hard Boiled...' is an total joy to behold. In a flight of postmodernity very typical of Murkami, it's actually an artifact created by one of the characters, presented to the reader before the story has even begun. Double-mystical!

'Land of the Trumpets' from Trouble for Trumpets by Peter Dallas Smith, Illustrated by Peter Cross

 

 images from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili or The Strife of Love in a Dream, 1599

'The City of Truth' , Bartholommeo Del Bene, 1609.

'25 plates are allegorical figures of pilgrimage and the City of Truth: Trophy in the middle of a palace, interior garden of a palace, Palace of vices, Labyrinth of miserliness, Basilica of modesty, Palace of leniency, Domicile of arrogance with augurs, scholars and mathematicians, Nature theatre of urbanity, Themis’ Temple, Vestals’ Temple, …'