Introducing The Inner Atlas: A Book You Walk Through

Some books you read. This one you walk through. The Inner Atlas is the new e-book in the members area, and it is different from anything we have made before.

What it is

Each chapter takes you to a place that exists only in the mind: a harbour, a lighthouse, a stretch of tide pools, a beach with a shipwreck on it. Further in there is a library of lives you did not live, a museum of small things, a hall of mirrors, a market where masks are sold. Further still are a forest of echoes, a river that runs backwards, a mountain made of weight, a storm coast. There are twenty-six chapters, spread across five regions of one large map.

Every place stands for something inside you. You are never told which part. The chapters are written in the second person and the present tense, so you are the one standing on the breakwater, and a good deal of the work happens in what you notice about your own reactions.

Not quite our other books

If you have read Beyond Mindfulness, you will know our usual style: clear sections, practical, a little teaching. This is looser. The chapters read like short stories, around six thousand words each, and the teaching is carried by what happens rather than by headings. We wanted a book you could settle into on a quiet evening, and perhaps not finish in one go.

Each chapter also has two diagrams, a plan or a cutaway of the place, so there are fifty-two of those, and a scene illustration to go with it.

The guide

You do not make the journey alone. A woman called Magdalena, a mapmaker, walks a little ahead of you. She has her own post, so I will leave her there.

Where to find it

The Inner Atlas is in the members area in English and in Spanish, where it is called El Atlas Interior. You can read it online chapter by chapter, or download the EPUB from the PDFs section and take it elsewhere. The Spanish edition is complete, with every chapter and every diagram labelled in both languages.

It is the first of what we hope will be several books set in this world. We have a lot of ideas about where else the map could go.