Locating imaginary homelands: Literature, geography, and Salman Rushdie

This paper represents an exploration of the relationships between geographical and fictional literatures. In general, geographers have not made sufficient use of literary sources in their work. In this paper the author goes beyond using literary quotations to provide a 'feel' or impression of a region or place, to regard specific texts as containing a 'voice' which can speak to the geographies created by academics. This means that geographers can regard fictional literature as offering an alternative account of the processes that they are seeking to describe and explain. After a brief introduction to the current relationship between geography and literature, it is discussed how fiction is used as a source in other disciplines. Finally, the suggested approach to literature is applied to the work of Salman Rushdie, especially to his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. textcopyright 1996 (January) Kluwer Academic Publishers.