A Mapmaker's Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice

by James Cowan

Book Overview

In sixteenth-century Venice, in an island monastery, a cloistered monk experiences the adventure of a lifetime--all within the confines of his cell. Part historical fiction, part philosophical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446673382
• ISBN13: 9780446673389
• Release Date: December 1997
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Deserving of a place on every community library fiction shelf.

The world is more than just a collection of continents and nations, as map maker Fra Mauro discovers in "A Mapmaker's Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice". Desiring to create the first map of the entire Earth, he sends out a call for information about the strange and far corners of the world. What he gets is more than objective words of what is at every bit of longitude and latitude. Highly recommended for historical fiction enthusiasts and deserving of a place on every community library fiction shelf.

A KEEPER

I truly enjoyed this book and put it on my "Read Again Shelf" (there aren't many there). Fra Mauro is a great character - I wanted to be a fly on the wall to actually see him at his work. I think several of the reviewers took this book too seriously. I spread out the reading of this over a couple of weeks rather than reading it straight through.

a dream come true!

This book is a great book, from the perspective of a monk, staying in his abby, away from the world. This monk, a friar intends to map the world from the adventures he hears from people who come to him. It is a great book, and I recommend it to one and all from age 13 up. The friar tries to map the world according to many people's views, and in the process, one learns of the adventures, and what the world was like at the time.

A Book That Stays In The Heart

A Mapmaker's Dream is a dream within a dream. Cowan's words work like magic on the pages giving the reader an interesting look into the meditations of Fra Mauro. The reader feels like an observer in all the stories of voyagers that traveler's brings to Mauro's cell. The revelations that he discovers speaks to the reader with the magic that surrounds such a work.

This is an excellent book

This novel, the story of a Renaissance monk, Fra Mauro, who was a cartographer living in Venice, was delightful. I was hooked from the introduction on. The way the introduction was written it sounded like Fra Mauro really existed, but that could be part of the story. The story is about this monk, living in a monestary in Venice, who's dream is to create a perfect world map. He does this in spite of the fact that he has never traveled. He is visited by sea captains and travelers of all sorts who tell him what they have seen. The real story is in what the travelers tell him and how he makes those tales his own. This book was a pleasure to read. I have recommended it to several friends and will continue to do so. This is not a difficult book to read. It can be read on many different levels. I hope you enjoy it.