This is an auction for A MAPMAKER'S DREAM by James Cowan.

"In Cowan's luminescent tale, a 16th-century Venetian monk named Fra Mauro slaves to create a map of the world - a map that will sum up humankind's broadest knowledge and experience. He is perfectly situated, for Venice, a merchant city at the crossroads, ‘has the world in the palm of its hand’. Fra Mauro absorbs all he hears - the story of an oyster shell embedded in an icon, tales from Persia and the land of the Tartars - and attempts to incoporate it into his map. He also has a shocking encounter with the cartography of a Tunisian slave whose world view is very different from his own. Each tale falls like a tiny gem in the reader's lap, and the atmosphere is at once dreamy and sharply detailed, throwing in relief another world and another time. This lovely meditation will enchant many readers."

• Library Journal (US)

"This entrancing historical novel purports to be a translation into English of a journal by a sixteenth-century Venetian, Fra Mauro, who sought to compose a map of the world using the latest information on recent discoveries of the earth's far corners. To that end, Fra Mauro invited traders and adventurers to the monastery cell where he lived or invited them to correspond with him there. This journal-cum-novel is marvellous not only at capturing time and place but also at recapturing the mentality of its milieu. It is appropriately rendered in the era's wonderment at new knowledge, at the realization ‘that men in foreign climes might adhere to beliefs contrary to our own’."

• Booklist (US)

Very favourable reviews on Amazon.com.

Hardback 1997.

151 pages.

Near new condition.

The cost of shipping is $4.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Wellington following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.