I know of no novel more cartographic than The Riddle of the Sands. Maps are recurrent objects in the story, starting from the moment the narrator gives proper consideration to the invitation he has received to go yachting in the Baltic: Maps are consulted all the way through the adventure, and the first-person narrator makes a particular point of inviting the reader to see on a map what he and other characters see. The asterisks in the extracts below indicate footnotes referring the reader to one or other of the maps included in the novel (these maps are reproduced above): The narrator engages directly with the reader about the practicalities of reproducing the maps consulted in the narrative: And here he differentiates between types of reader according to their cartographical competence: The maps reproduced and which the reader is invited to consult purport to be adaptations of the maps consulted in the narrative, with added crosses and lines indicating positions and trajectories specific to the story being told: A map of a different kind is reproduced in the text, drawn expressly to illustrate a situation in the narrative: A discovery that leads to the solution of the riddle of the sands is presented through a comparison of sea charts, which 'are apt to ignore the geography of the mainland', and his land-centred ordnance map. His close reading of the latter leads him to the discovery: On the last occasion the narrator consults a map his description foregrounds its materiality, 'pulpy and blurred with the day's exposure': The last action of the novel, the suicide of the traitor Dollmann, happens in the course of a discussion about a chart on which a buoy is wrongly marked: There are nowhere near as many maps in the 1979 film of The Riddle of the Sands. A narrational map is shown in the prologue, and in the body of the film there are three map-consultation scenes:
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