Which book best describes a place its author never visited?

Every author here built a distant country out of library shelves, maps and other people's travel notes. Some of those imagined places still shape how readers picture the real ones.

1. 1
   Henderson the Rain King

   Saul Bellow wrote his 1959 African novel from library research and anthropology classes, before he had ever been to Africa.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Dracula

   Bram Stoker's 1897 vampire novel opens in Transylvania, a region he never visited and knew only from books in the London Library.
   999pts
3. 3
   Tintin in Tibet

   Hergé drew his 1960 Himalayan album from books, photographs and climbers' accounts; he never travelled to Tibet.
   862pts
4. 4
   The Mysteries of Udolpho

   Ann Radcliffe's 1794 Gothic novel is set in Italy and France, neither of which she had ever visited.
   862pts
5. 5
   Amerika

   Franz Kafka's unfinished novel about a young immigrant in the United States was written by an author who never crossed the Atlantic.
   647pts
6. 6
   Tarzan of the Apes

   Edgar Rice Burroughs set his 1912 jungle story in Africa without ever setting foot on the continent.
   647pts
7. 7
   Michael Strogoff

   Jules Verne's 1876 novel sends a courier across Siberia, a land Verne never visited and described from travellers' accounts.
   647pts
8. 8
   Winnetou

   Karl May's 1893 Apache saga is set in the American West, which he never saw; his only US trip came in 1908 and got no farther west than Buffalo.
   646pts
9. 9
   The Lost World

   Arthur Conan Doyle put his 1912 dinosaur plateau in South America, one of the few continents his many travels never reached.
   0pts
10. 10
    The Tigers of Mompracem

    Emilio Salgari's 1900 Sandokan novel is set off the coast of Borneo, though Salgari never left Italy.
    0pts
11. 11
    William Tell

    Friedrich Schiller's 1804 play about the Swiss hero was written by a man who never set foot in Switzerland and worked from maps.
    0pts
12. 12
    Lost Horizon

    James Hilton invented Shangri-La in Tibet in his 1933 novel without ever having visited Tibet or the Himalaya.
    0pts
13. 13
    The Prairie

    James Fenimore Cooper wrote his 1827 novel of the Great Plains in Paris, never having travelled that far west himself.
    0pts

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