ABSTRACT
The map in Russell Hoban's book involves more than a simple alteration of place-names. Hoban has created a world in which the configuration of the coast, as well as language and culture, has changed due to sea-level rise. This chapter examines the various 'creative' connections between maps, cartography and literature. Maps and the imaginative realms of fiction have been almost constant bed-fellows since the advent of the modern novel. Brian Harley's concepts of the 'external and internal power' of cartography and the role of silences remain valid for maps of fictional places, as well as maps of real places incorporated into fictional narratives. As Matthew Edney notes, there is actually no such thing as 'the map', maps do not have to take a graphic form, but may be gestural, spoken or performed. Some literature can, on this basis, be read as 'dense geography', in which the milieu is 'thickly mapped' within the narrative.
