Content area
Full Text
Alessandro Scafi, Maps of Paradise British Library Publishing, London: 2013. Hardback, 179pp., 100 colour illustrations, ISBN 9780712357098, £20.00
Maps of Paradise is authored by Alessandro Scafi, who is a Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Cultural History at the University of London and the author of the previous work Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth, which discusses the Christian effort to map paradise.
This book expands on that theme and shows the various methods which have been used over the centuries to chart the location of paradise or alternatively the Garden of Eden which is a mythical location much like Shangri-La. For example, Scafi looks at the concept of paradise in the Muslim world which is...