Literary Locales Found on No Map: Five Novels Set in Realistic But Imaginary Places

Before writing my previous thirteen novels, I always took a research trip, a ritual that helped me nail down a vivid sense of place. When I was a foreign correspondent, my employer picked up the tab, and the novelistic material I gathered in Bosnia, Berlin, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay was a fortunate byproduct of notes I’d taken for newspaper stories.

In more recent years I traveled on my own dime, but still scribbled page after page of notes, filling them with scenes, descriptions and observations about how the locals go about their business.

For the main setting of my latest novel, Pariah, I began instead with a blank page. Rather than travel abroad, I explored within my own imagination. By borrowing bits and pieces of memories from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and the former East Germany, I began bringing to life an entirely new country.

It had a charming but compact capital city with a main square dating back to medieval times. It was ruled by a charismatic but increasingly despotic leader, whose chief of internal security was dangerously efficient. In the city center was a popular bar that appealed to both the powerful and the plebeian.

I sketched out a rough national history which allow the place to fit comfortably into its region. I created a few easily-reachable spots out in the boonies where an enterprising soul might manage to disappear for a while.

At first this country and its capital city didn’t even have a name. It was simply a faraway place of the mind—remote, yet instantly familiar to anyone who’d ever spent much time in Eastern Europe. And it certainly did not appear on any maps, except the one that was materializing in my head.

I decided to call it Bolrovia. It’s capital city was Blatsk. The book would be set in late 2023.

I had my reasons for this sleight of hand, and it wasn’t because I didn’t want to travel. The story would not have fit well in Berlin or Warsaw, for example, and in the cities and countries where it would have fit there might have been, well, a few legal complications arising from the descriptions of certain current leaders and other political figures.

The most pleasant surprise was how enjoyable it was. Building Bolrovia, and watching it come to life on the page, turned out to be quite satisfying. I also discovered that imaginary places lend themselves much easier to satire than real ones, so I took advantage of that as well.

Afterward, the experience prompted me to revisit some of my favorite novels which were also set in such locales. I don’t mean sci-fi, or fantasy, or alternate histories. I’m referring to fiction set in seemingly realistic locations that exist in the here and now, and often within real continents and regions.

And, as with Pariah, all five of these novels contain elements of satire. Maybe that comes with the territory, provided that the territory in question can’t be found on any globe. So, here are my five picks. Happy travels:

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Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan

This satirical romp from 2006 has everything you’d want in a novel set in an imaginary former Soviet Republic. Its unforgettable hero is the obese manchild, Misha Vainberg, son of a murdered Russian oligarch. Vainberg, by using a fake passport, has taken refuge in Absurdsvanï—aka Absurdistan—which is being torn asunder in its post-Soviet rebirth by a clash of Slavic ethnic groups, the Sevo and the Svanï.

The basis of their conflict? A dispute over which direction the footrest of the Orthodox cross should be tilted.

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

Everything in this 2001 novel takes place within a few acres of an unnamed capital city of an unnamed country in South America, within the grounds of the home of the Vice President. The action begins when a diva soprano’s birthday performance for a wealthy Japanese businessman and a few hundred privileged guests is raided by terrorists.

Their botched kidnapping (their intended target, the President, never showed) evolves into a months-long hostage situation, an ordeal which transforms the house into a compact nation with its own tidy dramas of love, music, tension, tragedy and sublime beauty.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

Vonnegut’s signature irreverence gives us the Caribbean island nation of San Lorenzo as the setting of this 1963 satire of science, religion, American foreign policy and the Atomic Age. Its ruthless dictator, “Papa” Monzano, is supported by the United States because he’s anti-communist.

His most trusted friend and advisor is an American ex-pat, Frank Hoenikker, whose father helped build the A-bomb, and who is hoarding a chunk of something called Ice-nine, which just might destroy the world. Woven into this unsettling yet humorous mix is a persecuted religious sect which worships the gospel of Bokononism.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

The home country of this dark and enduring masterpiece from 1985 is the eerily-retrograde Republic of Gilead, in which women who once held jobs and led independent lives are now strictly controlled and monitored, valued only for their ovaries and their obedience. Some might argue that this is bleak fantasy or sci-fi, or point out that it takes place at some vague point in the future.

But with each passing day it feels more current, like the culmination of some nightmarish fate that has just begun to show itself on the far horizon. A chilling satire of where our strictest so-called morals might yet lead us.

Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

Waugh’s skewering of Fleet Street, published in 1938, is set in the East Africa nation of Ishmaelia, where hordes of British reporters have descended to report on a brewing civil war that may have imperial repercussions. Having arrived to find there is no actual war, the competing scribes then set about creating one on the pages of their newspapers.

A bit dated, but still a hilarious spoof, and its larger lessons seem to be proven true every time the world’s media magnates take an interest in some factional conflict abroad.

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Pariah by Dan Fesperman is available via Knopf.