How Cities in Fiction help readers locate real world places

On September 13, a quiet crowd of readers and researchers gathered to attend the first ever public launch of Cities in Fiction at Champaca Bookstore. This online archival project, currently focused on India, helps readers find fictional works through locating them on the world map.

Cities in Fiction, founded by Apoorva Saini and Divya Ravindranath, is an online literary archive to find, recognise and pinpoint real world places mentioned in Indian literature. Categorising them through State, city or geography, it ultimately links users to the title of the book and the author’s name.

Operating online for the past three years, they opened on a public stage this week. The launch event, titled ‘Cities in Fiction: A Database of Literary Landscapes’ saw co-founder Apoorva Saini and educator Vijeta Kumar discuss the archive. Fellow co-founder Divya Ravindranath was present in the audience.

From Jeet Thayil’s Mumbai and Vivek Shanbagh’s Bengaluru, to Ruskin Bond’s Dehradun and Arundhati Roy’s Amyemenem, this archive lists nearly 700 books categorised on places that works of literature are based on. This includes rural and urban spaces across Indian States and a few cities abroad, as well. The list also included RK Narayan’s Malgudi and Kushwant Singh’s Mano Majra among others listed under ‘Fictional Cities’. 

Coming from a literature background, Apoorva says this project was both personal and professional. After multiple discussions with Divya, they decided to fulfill the need of a database at the “intersection of literature and cities”. What started in September 2023 with about a hundred books in their database, now comprises nearly 700 books, contributed by readers, researchers and authors from India and abroad.

“As a literature student, I was fascinated with Jane Austen, John Keats and others, but felt I knew Ireland much better than my own homeland through their stories,” says Apoorva. “This gap in finding a set database to list and explore books through places familiar to us was the motivation behind this initiative. While working on a personal project, the thought of creating a public access database ignited the idea of Cities in Fiction.”

Vijeta and Apoorva during the discussion
| Photo Credit:
C Madan Mohan

Today, the reception for this initiative has reached a global stage. Academics and researchers from South Africa have reached out to the two founders proposing to kick-start a similar project based on their own countries. An audience member from South Africa, present at the event mentioned that Cities in Fiction inspired her to start a similar project for her country.

The conversation between Apoorva and Vijeta lasted over an hour. While the event focused on Vijeta’s writing experiences and her relationship with Bengaluru as a city, the bigger question was — how do cities or places shape fictional narratives?

Vijeta answered with an anecdote of how a student of hers noted, “Cows in Bengaluru are nameless, while the ones in my hometown have names”. She believes this conveys the geographical differences of social intimacy in urban, semi-urban or rural spaces.

Divya Ravindranath said, “This initiative brings together our love for cities and our love for fiction, bringing a unique look at cityscapes. No two authors will write about a city and its experiences in the same way. It is also a great way of memory-keeping.”

To find out more about the archive, visit https://www.citiesinfiction.com/