Invisible Lines

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- There are obvious borders and barriers (walls, signs, mountain ranges) and also unseen, but nonetheless recognised, ones. This fascinating book shows how 30 invisible lines shape our actions, from the Orthodox Jewish eruv (a ritual enclosure that allows observers to keep Shabbat) to the Wallace Line (marking differing biospheres) to the safe and unsafe spaces of Los Angeles street gangs to the Qinling-Huaihe line used to separate north and south China on the basis of temperature. The sort of book that makes you think differently about the geographical restrictions we unconsciously impose upon ourselves. Lindy

'Old worlds enhanced, new worlds exposed and challenged ... a wise and thought-provoking series of raids across borders we thought we knew and others made visible to us, by Maxim Samson's forensic eye, for the first time' - Iain Sinclair, author of The Gold Machine and The Last London 'Utterly engrossing! Samson's literary atlas of the world's unseen boundaries and how they've shaped our lives demands to be read' - Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History 'A fascinating book ... a truly original adventure into new ways of exploring what we mean by a sense of place' - Simon Jenkins, author of The Celts and A Short History of England 'The world is a mesh of lines. We don't normally see them, and so we blunder on, unaware of where we really are and missing out on so much. Samson's iconoclastic new geography will make the scales fall from your eyes. A tremendous and important read' - Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild 'A journey to the unmarked and unseen borders that shape our world ... a fascinating, extraordinary and insightful exploration of the many boundaries that define us' - Alastair Bonnett, author of The Age of Islands and Off the Map