Langtext

Arresting and beautiful, The Consolation of Maps tells a story of ill-fated passion. Theodora Appel runs a company that is more like a family. When young Kenji Tanabe moves from Tokyo to Washington, he’s initiated into her rarefied world of antiquarian cartography. But Theodora – brilliantly successful, beguilingly secretive – has another obsession. It is in Florence, where past clashes with present and even love has a price, that her impossible dream will threaten them all.

Austere and elusive . . . lithe, controlled narrative . . . Bourke has created a novel that, like the complex objects - at once historical yet aesthetic - from which it takes its name, repays effort and attention Neil Hegarty Irish Times

A delicate, devastating novel that charts our understanding of love, loss and the unknown

Bourke, Thomas
Thomas Bourke was born in Ireland and lives in Italy. A graduate of University College Dublin, he is author of a book on relations between Europe and Japan. The Consolation of Maps is his first novel.