The map is not the story

September 17, 2013 5:55 AM

The Book Globe has mapped the settings of all the 267 novels nominated for the Booker Prize since 1969.
posted by MartinWisse (21 comments total)

That could be changing.
posted by Artw at 6:00 AM on September 17, 2013

Come on, people! Where is the great Antarctican novel?!?
posted by Naberius at 6:02 AM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Be interesting to overlay this on the world map divided into 665 equally populated districts (posted just before this one).
posted by ardgedee at 6:02 AM on September 17, 2013

It's pretty much a maP of the Commonwealth with emphasis on the UK, South Africa and India. India is pretty big in Booker terms.
posted by Artw at 6:12 AM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

SO MANY ENGLISH TOWNS SO LITTLE TIME
posted by lineofsight at 6:13 AM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]

I need to get going on my Booker prize novel set in Mexico.
posted by vacapinta at 6:17 AM on September 17, 2013

Jeez, the Booker folks definitely have some issues with Latinos.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:19 AM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is a boring map. Because the Booker prize, of course is only open to British writers and those from Ireland and the Commonwealth.

I suppose it illustrates the adage of "write what you know" since the settings of the books are mainly ... Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.
posted by vacapinta at 6:22 AM on September 17, 2013

"Rural England, what is now Turkey, Kolkata, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Tokyo. Not my list of most-want-to-visit places..."

Wow, you don't often see someone article-shit himself in the very first sentence.
posted by Mapes at 6:23 AM on September 17, 2013

I got curious and tried to find the related article in which this year's list was revealed.

Am I crazy, or do they actually not mention anywhere in this article what the actual list is?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:03 AM on September 17, 2013

Wow, you don't often see someone article-shit himself in the very first sentence.

He isn't saying that they aren't places he would want to visit, he's saying "no, this isn't my list of places I most want to visit (which it could well be), but instead is..."
posted by rory at 7:05 AM on September 17, 2013

Is that big dot on the board between the states and Canada Buffalo? AH it's Toronto. Yeah, okay.
posted by likeatoaster at 7:53 AM on September 17, 2013

It seems to be where they've decided Ontario is. Most of the dots at Margaret Atwood, like the fictional "Port Ticonderoga" from Atwood's The Blind Assasin for one. That confused me, since Fort Ticonderoga is an actual place. It's an odd choice.
posted by maryr at 7:58 AM on September 17, 2013

Zadie Smith's New England from "On Beauty" is apparently the Winchester Swim & Tennis Club, MA. This is especially funny as nothing happens in Winchester. I haven't read the book though - does any of the story actually take place at that location?
posted by maryr at 8:03 AM on September 17, 2013

Interesting map, but do you pretend Ian McEwen's every utterance is a communion with the divine?

Ian McEwan captures this two-places-at-once-ness with the utmost precision in an endnote to On Chesil Beach. "Edward and Florence's hotel," he writes, "just over a mile south of Abbotsbury, Dorset, occupying an elevated position in a field behind the beach car park – does not exist."

Why, yes you do. Well played. Until On Chesil Beach, no fiction writer had ever placed a fictitious landmark in an otherwise realistic setting. Nor described it as not actually existing. When other authors have that line in the fine print that says "This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously"? That's just a paraphrase of Ian McEwen's incomparably brilliant "utmost precision."

Also, "duality" is a word, and a precise one at that. "Two-places-at-once-ness" is neither.
posted by gompa at 8:08 AM on September 17, 2013

Looking at the map again... they seem to have located The Handmaid's Tale in DC (at the White House, no less) which is weird, because I thought it took place in Cambridge, MA... Wikipedia seems to agree with me.
posted by maryr at 8:13 AM on September 17, 2013

Oh if you want to slag off Ian McEwan (or anybody else), you want this Grauniad article and comment thread. Best comment was dissing Anita Brookner with "that soft mew of genteel distress at being too anaemic to grasp life".
posted by MartinWisse at 8:38 AM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Does this mean there's been no Booker books set in space?
posted by dng at 9:07 AM on September 17, 2013

I seem to recall some of the scenes in Handmaid's Tale being in DC, maybe some of the flashbacks with her mother? But I agree, the bulk was clearly somewhere in New England.
posted by tavella at 9:43 AM on September 17, 2013

Wow, you don't often see someone article-shit himself in the very first sentence.

You mean second sentence, I assume.
posted by kenko at 11:10 AM on September 17, 2013

Jeez, the Booker folks definitely have some issues with Latinos.

No harrowing account of the Falklands War?
posted by Apocryphon at 5:08 PM on September 17, 2013