Found in an obscure Spanish arts ‘zine from the late 1987, newly on Archive.org. Punto y Coma, No. 8 had a long section on Lovecraft. Several articles but basic introductory stuff, by the look of it. Yet there is this unusual map, which attempted to trace the movements of Abdul Alhazred, the mad poet.
I seem to recall there’s at least one chunky novel that tells the ‘life story of Alhazred’, and I guess it probably has maps. But this map may interest some.
“I seem to recall there’s at least one chunky novel that tells the ‘life story of Alhazred’, and I guess it probably has maps.”
Are you being arch for rhetorical effect? Or have you not read it? Assuming you are referring to the book of which I am thinking, I haven’t read it—although I have read one of the others in the same “series” of Al Hazredalia, which did not contain maps or other extensive illustration.
No, I was just being usefully vague – since I didn’t want to spend 40 minutes tracking down the title and details. I recall reading a review of it, possibly a group review with others like it, many years ago. I also recalled from the review that it was a very long novel, and so I naturally assumed that a long and somewhat topographical novel would have some maps to help out the reader. I don’t think it was a series of novels, though. It was a big one-off 600-page literary ‘life of’, so far as I vaguely recall. I tried to track it down online, but Google gets befuddled by all sorts of weird stuff for such a search and it would have taken too long.
ALHAZRED by Donald Tyson.
Super, thanks. I’ll have to take a look and see if it has maps.
Ah, here we go. Yes Martin, that’s the one that I vaguely recalled the review of. It has indeed been developed into series, as you say Dave. ‘Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred’ (2004), followed by ‘Alhazred: Author of the Necronomicon’ (2007) and Amazon now has various others following on after that – and also wishes to sell me an apparently related Tarot deck. I find that the first book had a basic “Map of the Region” at the front, showing a dotted travel-route somewhat different from the linear one seen on the map in my blog post. We could probably use a nice big new map for his travels, with lots of details.