The Literary Mirror

The Cartographer of Lost Lanes ends with an unfinished map. Was that always the plan?

It became the plan about two-thirds through drafting, once I realised a finished map would contradict everything the book had been arguing — that this village's naming history genuinely can't be settled by one authoritative document.

How much of the lane-naming history is drawn from an actual place?

The pattern is real — colonial, then national, then municipal renaming layered over each other — but the specific village and its lanes are invented. I didn't want any single real community to feel I'd written their disputes for them without asking.

What's next for you after two Goa-set novels?

I'm not sure I'm done with Goa, honestly, though the next book moves the setting slightly, to a fishing village rather than an inland one. Different maps, same stubbornness about who gets to draw them.