The Murderer's Ape: Wegelius Jakob

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Bushell, Sally. (2015). Mapping Victorian Adventure Fiction: Silences, Doublings, and the Ur-map in Treasure Island and King Solomon’s Mines. Victorian Studies, 57(4), 611–637. Nodleman, Perry. (2008). The Hidden Adult. Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Lyngstad, Anne Berit, and Samoilow, Tatjana Kielland. (2022, forthcoming). Det kosmopolitiske mulighetsrommet i Jakob Wegelius’ Mördarens apa (2014). In Agora. Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon. No. 2-3. Highly recommended as a book to share at bedtime, as it has plenty of appeal for adults, or for confident readers of ten or older, as it is quite long.

The False Rose by Peter Graves, Jakob Wegelius | Waterstones The False Rose by Peter Graves, Jakob Wegelius | Waterstones

A young girl in China must turn detective when her mother disappears, and she is convinced her own life is in danger. This mystery thriller for young readers is an excellent introduction to magic realism.Created by environmental activist Trang Nguyen and award-winning manga artist Jeet Zdung, this is a great story that will delight young animal activists and enthusiasts, based on a true story. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

The Murderer’s Ape | BookTrust

Several issues arose during the process. For one thing, many of the places Sally Jones visits on her travels are merely mentioned, and function as markers. I have nevertheless chosen to map them as part of the narrative. Also, places are frequently both places of action and projected places, e.g. when the narrator recalls an earlier point in the narrative. I have mapped such places as places of action. The mapping of large areas—such as oceans, rivers, deserts or whole continents—was also an issue, as such places cannot be mapped accurately. I have therefore omitted them from the map; in this way, the novel’s actual geography goes beyond what can be visualized. Finally, there is the matter of fictional places. Almost all places in The Murderer’s Ape refer to actual locations, but there are two places I could not locate: the maharaja’s palace and Agiere. Both are central to the narrative. The novel informs us that the palace is in Bhapur in India, and that Agiere lies along the river Zezere, not far from Constancia, Santarem. I have thus mapped these toponyms to represent the novel’s two fictional places.

The methodology for the visualized mapping of the novel is influenced by Italian literary critic Franco Moretti. In Atlas of the European Novel, Moretti ( 1998) develops a method for mapping authorships and genres by plotting toponyms on a map. The maps he creates do not merely show where a narrative is set. Rather, they are “analytical tools that pose new questions, and force you to look for new answers” (Moretti, 1998, p. 4). Moretti explains his method in straightforward terms: “you select a textual feature, find the data, put them on paper—and then you look at the map. In the hope that the visual construct will be more than the sum of its parts: that it will show a shape, a pattern that may add something to the information that went into making it” ( 1998, p. 13). Thus, mapping does not merely involve plotting places on a map, but requires close interaction with and analysis of the text. A dark and dangerous world peopled by dwarves, shape-shifting vixen, mythical beasts and stone Goyls lurks on the other side of the ornate mirror in Jacob's father's study. I began mapping The Murderer’s Ape by marking every toponym in the text. Inspired by the classification of places developed by Piatti et al. ( 2009) in the project A Literary Atlas of Europe, I differentiated between places of action, projected places (that characters remember or dream of) and markers (places that are merely mentioned). Footnote 2 On the basis of the gathered data, I compiled a number of lists comprising the place names, their frequency and the associated geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude). The lists corresponded to the following questions: Where does the action take place? What does the novel’s complete geography look like when every place name mentioned in the text is included? What is the geography of India and Lisbon? What does the characters’ geography look like? Poor, seedy and full of suspicious individuals, Alfama is the perfect place for plotting crimes, political conspiracies and deceit. As Moretti ( 1998, p. 35) underscores: “Each genre possesses its own space, then— and each space its own genre”, stressing the importance of literary space and place. Alfama’s dark and scary harbor is necessary for Wegelius’ crime plot, which leads to Alphonse Morro’s disappearance and Koskela’s arrest. However, though Alfama is depicted as dangerous at night, the real danger lies in the richer parts of the city. This is where the bishop—the leader of the royalist terrorists—resides. Meanwhile, the Alfama district becomes Sally Jones’ home and allows her to make friends. It is a place for the powerless, the underdogs—and thus a place for subversion. The novel presents Lisbon both as a form of critical spatial practice—a city environment critiqued and reshaped by means of the characters’ movement through it—and as representational space that encodes values and cultural practices. The sense of the city grows out of the combination of these presentations of space. Bradford, Clare. (2007). Unsettling Narratives. Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.