Rocking all over the word

It had to happen – but who would have thought it would come from Germany? Yes, we have the first Google Map influenced novel, written by debut writer Christoph Benda.
Benda's work, Senghor on the Rocks, is a geo-referenced electronic novel in which the text is combined with an embedded map mash-up from Google Maps on a website.
The map, viewed in the satellite mode, moves as the location changes in the novel and every page of text is accompanied by a corresponding map. The geo-novel is an adaption of a book written by Benda, a former advertising copywriter now working at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and is based on his travels in Senegal.
"For me, the project always has been related to a map in a certain sense. Only that it wasn't hi-tech, online satellite imagery but the rather worn out paper map I had carried with me throughout all my time in Africa," says Benda who wrote the book between 2002 and 2005.
"It's a fast paced adventure that starts as a job, develops into an involuntary journey and culminates in a reflection about the possibilities and limits of cross-cultural understanding," explains Florian Ledermann, a software engineer at the Vienna University of Technology, who worked with Benda on the project.
As yet the work is only available in German, bu with the launch this year by Amazon of the internet-connected Kindle electronic book reader, it may not be too long before even more geo-referenced publications hit the mainstream.