Google Maps novel is a real page turner

CHRISTOPH BENDA'S first novel Senghor on the Rocks seems to be the first which combines text with an embedded map mash-up from Google Maps.

The book is in German so we have not read it but, according to the snazzy pictures we have seen, the map, which is fixed in the "Satellite View" mode, moves as the location changes in the novel and every page of text is accompanied by a corresponding map.

Quite why we would be interested in exact locations of where everything is in a story is a mystery to us, but the German's like to do things very precisely. Thus it makes sense that, if the boy stood on the burning deck, you would want to know the exact co-ordinates of the boat and the location of the nearest service station.

Benda, a former advertising copywriter, now working at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, has based the book on his travels in the African nation of Senegal, so it makes a little sense we guess.

Benda, who wrote the book between 2002 and 2005, said that the project always has been related to a map in a certain sense. In his case it was an old-tech paper map he carried with him throughout his time in Africa.

The story is set in Dakar when the nation's jubilation over its first qualification for football's World Cup is overshadowed by news of the death of Leopold Sedar Senghor, the republic's first president. [Why is it that Germans always go on about the World Cup? Ed.]

Florian Ledermann, a software engineer at the Vienna University of Technology, worked with Benda to "geo-annotate" Benda's novel 18 months ago.

"We wanted to add something to the story that helps readers – especially as the story is set in an unfamiliar environment – to envision the mood of the story without illustrating it," he said. µ

L'Inq
AP