Photographer: José Luis Ametller

»Go to Slideshow: Settings for Novels

Novels make particularly good travel companions. They make even better travel guides. A well-written book is an envelope of space and time. Inspired by Einstein’s theory of relativity, the literary theorist M. M. Bakhtin called the fictional universe of well-conceived novels “‘chronotopes,’ the places where the knots of narrative are tied and untied.” What better way to explore a novel’s “timespace” than to transport yourself there and read your way through it?

Travel writing tends to skate on the surface of a place, while novels reveal much deeper truths. For any literary traveler, it’s a thrill to seek out those settings where the real world has carried on, yet the fictional world is still palpable. Often, the imaginary—the Macondos and Yoknapatawphas—eclipse the here and now—a testament to the writer’s power to transform the ordinary into the eternal.
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—Megan Cytron, Editor of Trazzler

Sponsor: CODA Cristina Quattrone

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