A Mapmaker's Dream [Hardcover]

James Cowan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 1996

     In sixteenth-century Venice, in an island monastery, a cloistered monk experiences the adventure of a lifetime — all within the confines of his cell. Part historical fiction, part philosophical mystery, A Mapmaker's Dream tells the story of Fra Mauro and his struggle to realize his life's work: to make a perfect map — one that represents the full breadth of Creation. News of Mauro's projects attracts explorers, pilgrims, travelers, and merchants, all eager to contribute their accounts of faraway people and places. A she listens to the tales of the strange and fantastic things they've seen, Mauro comes to regard the world as much more than continents and kingdoms: that it is also made up of a vast and equally real interior landscape of beliefs, aspirations, and dreams. Mauro's map grows and takes shape, becoming both more complete and incomprehensible. In the process, the boundaries of Mauro's world are pushed to the extreme, raising questions about the relationship between representation, imagination, and the nature of reality itself.
     

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

James Cowan's fantasy of a Venetian cartographer owes a large and obvious debt to Borges, with its speculations on geography as a construct of the human consciousness, its erudite references, and its tales of explorations into an imaginary world. Through the purported journals of Fra Mauro, a cloistered monk who actually lived during the 15th century and who, in Cowan's novel, has resolved to create a map of the world without ever leaving his cell, we learn of a race of men with one foot the size of an umbrella, about the Vatican emissary to the Mongol court,and about the devil worshippers of the land called Mosul. Over the course of the book, Fra Mauro creates a world of his own, composed less of geographical knowledge than of meditation, folklore, and books.

From Publishers Weekly

This accomplished bit of armchair traveling from Australian novelist Cowan (Letters from a Wild State) takes the form of a 16th-century Venetian monk's journal. Fra Mauro, a cartographer, is working on a map of the world based on the oral reports of merchants, travelers and ambassadors who visit him in his cell. Oscillating between a dogmatic medieval mindset and a modern tolerance for?and interest in?diverse cultures and races, Fra Mauro hears stories about the far-flung world in the age of exploration. Among the wonders he hears about are a heretical sect of devil-worshipers, an Egyptian priestess's mummy, jungle people in Borneo whose religion is built around deciphering the calls of seven sacred birds, Christian missionaries in China and Genghis Khan's fabled capital of Karakorum. The travelers' impressions lead him to formulate conflicting, strikingly modern theories of cognition, politics and metaphysics: the world is pure thought, constantly changing as humanity's consciousness evolves; knowledge involves emotion as much as observation; the planet is a global community. The conception is reminiscent of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities?with a twist: Calvino made his traveler, Marco Polo, both tale-teller and interpreter, while his audience, Kublai Khan, was mute; Cowan gives full voice to his audience, Fra Mauro, making him, not the travelers, the interpreter of the world. Full of startling leaps of imagination and thought, this small gem of a book proves that the mind's desire can be as seaworthy a vessel as a schooner for exploring new worlds.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 151 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st edition (October 8, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570621969
• ISBN-13: 978-1570621963
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,080,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the reading, May 6, 2000

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Mapmaker's Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice (Paperback)

I beg to differ with several who have reviewed this book before me. The premise of the book - a monk trying to draw a perfect map of the world - frames the story in a worldview very different than our own. Understanding the prefect map to require knowledge of the flora, fauna and culture of the place is far from our concern with projections and satellite accuracy.

Once one has understood the fundamental world view of the monk, the story becomes an interesting unfolding of stories from a variety of travelers - some true, some fanciful - that slowly brings Fra Mauro to question the presuppositions of his world view.

As such, the book helps us to understand something of the strain on European culture as it opened out to the rest of the world in the age of exploration.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is an excellent book, December 5, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: A Mapmaker's Dream (Hardcover)

This novel, the story of a Renaissance monk, Fra Mauro, who was a cartographer living in Venice, was delightful. I was hooked from the introduction on. The way the introduction was written it sounded like Fra Mauro really existed, but that could be part of the story. The story is about this monk, living in a monestary in Venice, who's dream is to create a perfect world map. He does this in spite of the fact that he has never traveled. He is visited by sea captains and travelers of all sorts who tell him what they have seen. The real story is in what the travelers tell him and how he makes those tales his own. This book was a pleasure to read. I have recommended it to several friends and will continue to do so. This is not a difficult book to read. It can be read on many different levels. I hope you enjoy it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A KEEPER, January 25, 2008

By 

Dick Johnson (Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Mapmaker's Dream (Hardcover)

I truly enjoyed this book and put it on my "Read Again Shelf" (there aren't many there). Fra Mauro is a great character - I wanted to be a fly on the wall to actually see him at his work.

I think several of the reviewers took this book too seriously. I spread out the reading of this over a couple of weeks rather than reading it straight through.