Mapped
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Victor Frankenstein is a Genevese, and the lake is the fixed centre of the book: his family's house in the city, the campagne at Belrive, and Plainpalais across the water, where the creature kills his brother William. From there the story climbs to the Mer de Glace above Chamonix, the real glacier where Victor meets the creature face to face. The making of the creature at Ingolstadt, the destroyed mate in the Orkneys, and the final chase across the Arctic ice all lie far outside this frame, and are flagged as excursions.
5 places →
Heidi
Johanna Spyri
The orphan Heidi is sent to live with her gruff grandfather on the high alp above a Swiss mountain village, where she thrives among the goats and the sunshine, until she is taken away to be companion to the invalid Clara in Frankfurt and pines for the mountains. Spyri set her village, the Dörfli, at Maienfeld in the canton of Graubünden: the grandfather's hut on the alp above the town, the high pastures where Peter grazes the goats, and the return from Frankfurt to the healing air of the heights.
5 places →
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
A young engineer goes up to Davos for a three-week visit to his cousin at a mountain sanatorium and stays seven years, the fever of the place and of one guest keeping him on the heights while the flatland forgets him. The map climbs from the cure-town of Davos-Platz in the valley up the funicular to the sanatorium shelf, and out onto the high slopes where a blizzard nearly ends him.
6 places →