Ten novels featuring mythical countries

In Partial Disgrace, a novel by the late Charles Newman more than twenty years in the writing, is being published by Dalkey Archive this spring. The book concerns an imaginary Central European nation, Cannonia. Its editor, Ben Ryder Howe, came up with a list of ten novels featuring mythical countries for Publishers Weekly. One entry on the list:

Costaguana

The setting of Nostromo, Joseph Conrad’s acid 1904 political novel about a revolution-torn, resource-cursed country plagued by the meddling of cynical and idealistic Westerners. Since it combines aspects of Colombia, Peru and most of all Panama (none of which Conrad ever visited, interestingly), its location is thought to be somewhere along the coastline of northern South America.

Read about the other mythical countries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue