Altered or Imaginary Places

I recently finished Zuleika Dobson which features the fictional Judas College at Oxford. (Which granted I've always wanted to see Oxford)

Having recently seen the Chicago Field Museum exhibit on Maps of Imaginary places it led me to think about what books inspire travel even if the place is not precisely real.

Does anyone have any of those books that still inspired travel?

Two works come to mind:

Perdido Street Station

City of Saints and Madmen

Not quite your ideal vacation destinations, but the imagination it took to create such strange and elaborate locales and culture is astounding.

Read recently

Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiongo -- the African country of Aburiria, presumably a fictionalized Kenya

The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block -- the imaginary world of Isidora

or Ed McBains' Isola.

I just reviewed You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers for my blog. It made me want to jump up and run for the nearest airport and ask for a ticket to the most obscure place I could find. That book has you bouncing all over the place. Senegal, Morocco, Estonia to name a few. Very fun book.

One of my favorites: Italo Clavino`s Invisible Cities - it makes you think over and over about what you have already seen and kind of changes your perspective about new places to see

Loved Invisible Cities. Have you seen The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel? It has descriptions and maps of many imaginary places from novels.

Oh Invisible Cities is wonderful. I have heard of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places but not picked it up but I may have to now.

I recently acquired a slim book of maps of the various arrondisments of Paris at the turn of the century. Since I have not been to Paris and since Paris has no doubt changed significantly it is sort of like an imaginary place. I actually had that feeling reading Haussmann, or the Distinction since that Paris is gone as well.

Since I joined the LT site just over a week ago, I have started a handwritten list of books I just have to read. I have it beside me everytime I go into this site.

After reading the first few reviews of Invisible Cities I have had to put it to the top of the list. The list is already 16 books long!!

By the way I too have The Dictionary of Imaginary Places and it is a wonderful thing.

Olen Steinhauer's books feature an unnamed imaginary Eastern European Country during the Cold War.