Checkpoints

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The aim of the forty "Points of Interest" is to facilitate the Errant Book will visit the maximun number of cultures on five continent. It will be a modest tribute to all kinds of people, cultures, traditions, languages, religions from our world. We are aware that there are not all who should be listed.

Start Point

Spain, Barcelona
Ramon Llull
Start Point: Ramon Llull scuplture at the University of Barcelona.
Location: Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585. Barcelona, Spain
Description: He is considered one of the creators of the Catalan language literature and one of the first to use a neo-Latin language to express philosophical, scientific and technical as well as fictional texts. He wrote 243 books that included such diverse subjects as philosophy (Ars Magna), science (Arbre des Sciences, Tractat d'astronomia), education (Blanquerna, including The Book of Amic e Amat), mysticism (Book of Contemplation ), grammar (Retòrica nova), cavalry ( "Book of Orders of Chivalry"), novels (Book of Wonders, which includes the Llibre de les Beast), and many other topics that the author himself immediately translated into Arabic and Latin.











Europe (10)

Portugal, Porto
Bookstore Lello e Irmao
Checkpoint: Bookstore Lello e Irmao
Location: Rua das Carmelitas, 144. Porto, Portugal.
Description: Bookstore Lello e Irmao is one of the most beautiful bookstores in Porto and the world. It is the flagship store for one of the most important Portuguese publishing houses. Designed by Xavier Esteves, the bookstore's architecture and interior design are stunning. The facade is an excellent neo-gothic design. Once inside, there is the curvaceous red stairway connecting the two levels.

England, London
Karl Marx
Checkpoint: Karl Marx House
Location: Dean StreetLondon, W1D 4, United Kingdom
Description: Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism. Living in London Marx is dedicated to writing one of his major works, Capital.

Scotland, Edinburgh
Adam Smith
Checkpoint: Adam Smith Sculpture
Location: Parlament Square. Edinburgh, Scotland
Description: Adam Smith is widely cited as the father of modern economics. Thanks to his work called The Wealth of Nations, Smith has been celebrated by advocates of free market policies as the founder of free market economics.

Netherlands, Amsterdam
The Diary of a Young Girl
Checkpoint: Ana Frank House
Location: Prinsengracht 267. Amsterdam, Holand
Description: The Diary of a Young Girl is a book based on the writings from a diary written by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Denmark, Copenhagen
Hans Christian Andersen
Checkpoint: Statue of The Little Mermaid
Location: Langelinie Street 1. Copenhage, Denmark
Description: Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", and the "The Ugly Duckling". His observations of life, his travels, the charm of nature and the legends were the best sources of inspiration.

Italy, Venice
The Travels of Marco Polo
Checkpoint: Marco Polo House
Location: Corte Prima del Milion, 30100 Venecia (Veneto), Italy
Description: The Travels of Marco Polo was a very famous and popular book in the 13th century. The description of his travels and stays in the Orient, including Asia, Persia, China and Indonesia, between 1271 and 1298 is also known as Oriente Poliano or Description of the World

Austria, Vienna
Café Central
Checkpoint: Café Central
Location: Ecke Herrengasse / Strauchgasse 1010 Vienna, Austria
Description: Café Central is a coffeehouse opened in 1860. It became a key meeting place of the Viennese intellectual scene. At their tables began to draw the works of writer and poet Peter Altenberg, the playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the mathematician and writer Leo Perutz, the political and theoretical revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the philosopher, journalist and actor Egon Friedell or the architect Adolf Loos.

Russia, Moscow
Anton Chejov
Checkpoint: Cementery Novodevichy, Moscow
Location: Cementery Novodevichy, Moscow
Description: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in world literature. Chekhov died from complications of tuberculosis. He is buried in the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

Greece, Delphi
Homer
Checkpoint: Archaeological Site of Delphi
Location: Delphi, Greece
Description: The legend of the founding of the temple at Delphi was known by Homer, who says Apolo wanted to found an oracle and came to Crisa, near Mount Parnassus, and liked the place and started building the temple which was completed under the direction of two brothers, Agamedes and Trophonius. Homer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Turkey, Istanbul
Muhammad's letter to Muqawqis
Checkpoint: Topkapi Palace
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Description: Muhammad sent out letters to the kings of the Arabs and the non-Arabs inviting them to Islam, one of them was the governor of Egypt Al-Muqawqis. Muhammad's letter to Muqawqis, was eventually preserved in the Christian monastery of Akhmim in Egypt. The letter was written on a parchment. From there a French orientalist obtained it and sold it to Sultan Abdülmecid of Turkey, for a consideration of 300 Pounds. The Sultan had the letter fixed in a golden frame and had it preserved in the Topkapi Palace.











Asia (10)

Israel, Qumrán
Dead Sea scrolls
Checkpoint: Qumrán Caves
Location: Near Kibbutz of Kalia, Israel
Descripción: The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 BCE,

Iran, Neishapur
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Checkpoint: Tomb of Omar Khayyam
Location: Neishapur, Iran
Description: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam are a selection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1123), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer.

Uzbekistan, Bukhara
Nasrudin
Checkpoint: Nasrudin Sculpture
Location: Lyab-i Hauz ensemble, Bukhara, Uzbekistán
Description: The Nasrudin stories are known throughout the Near, Middle East and Central Asia and have touched cultures around the world. Superficially, most of the Nasrudin stories may be told as jokes or humorous anecdotes. They are told and retold endlessly in the teahouses and caravanserais of Asia and can be heard in homes and on the radio. Nasrudin is considered a Muslim Don Quixote because he used to be sane in his insanity.

Kirguistan, Biskek
Manas
Checkpoint: Monument to Manas
Location: Manas Square, between Chui and Manas street. Biskek, Kirguistan
Description: The Epic of Manas is a traditional epic poem of the Kyrgyz people. Manas is the name of the epic's hero. One recording of the orally transmitted poem, with close to half a million lines, is twenty times longer than Homer's Odyssey and Iliad combined, or about twice as long as the Mahābhārata. Parts of it are often recited at Kyrgyz festivities by specialists in the epic, called Manaschi (Kyrgyz: Манасчы). Manaschis are usually called to their profession in a dream. In this dream, they meet Manas or other characters from the epic, who tell them to become Manas narrators.

India, Dharamsala
Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts
Checkpoint: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
Location: Gangchen Kyishong Dharamsala 1792, India
Description: The Library of Tibetan Works and Archives is a Tibetan library in Dharamsala, India. The library was founded by His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama on June 11, 1970 and is considered one of the most important libraries and institutions of Tibetan works in the world.

China, Dunhuang
Diamond Sutra
Checkpoint: Mogao Caves
Location: Dunhuang, China
Description: The Chinese Diamond Sutra is the oldest known dated printed book in the world, printed in the 9th year of Xiantong Era of the Tang Dynast. The text was purchased in 1907 by the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein in the walled-up Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, in northwest China from a monk who was guarding the caves known as the "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas."

China, Beijing
The True Story of Ah Q
Checkpoint: Lu Zun Museum
Location: 19 Fuchengmen Gongmen Ertiao. Beijing, China
Description: The True Story of Ah Q is generally held to be a masterpiece of modern Chinese literature, since it is considered the first piece of work fully to utilize Vernacular Chinese after the 1919 May 4th Movement in China.

Russia, Arseniev
Dersu Uzala
Checkpoint: Monument to Arseniev and Dersu
Location: Arseniev, Russia
Description: Dersu Uzala is the title of a book by the Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev. Arsenyev's book tells of his travels in the Ussuri basin in the Russian Far East. Dersu was the name of a Nanai hunter who acted as a guide for Arsenyev's surveying crew from 1902 to 1907, and saved them from starvation and cold. Arsenyev portrays him as a great man who establish a relationship with nature as equals.

Japan, Otsu
Matsuo Bashō
Checkpoint: Bashō's grave
Location: Gichu-ji Temple. Otsu, Japan
Description: Matsuo Bashō was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku.

Vietnam, Hanoi
Van Mieu, Temple of Literature
Checkpoint: Temple of Literature
Location: Pho Quoc Tu Giam with Pho Van Mieu. Hanoi, Vietnam
Description: Founded in 1070 as a Confucian temple, afterwards become Vietnam's first university, the Quốc Tử Giám or Imperial Academy, was established within the temple to educate Vietnam's bureaucrats, nobles, royalty and members of the elite. Today the Temple of Literature is a tribute to Confucius and his teachings: the good conduct of life, governance of the state (charity, justice, and respect for the hierarchy), care of tradition, study and meditation.











Oceania (3)

Australia, Northern Territory
Uluru
Checkpoint: Uluru
Location: Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park, Northern Territory, Australia.
Description: For the Anangu Uluru is the sanctuary of the "Dream Time", a time when the Earth was forming. At that time, heroes, half human half animal conducted tours and deeds, leaving their descendants a network of paths and roads through the vast Australian deserts and Uluru being the crucial point in this intricate network of routes, a sacred place which preserve the memory and the word of his people.

Chile, Easter Island
Rongo rongo
Checkpoint: Moais
Location: Easter Island, Chile
Description: Rongo-Rongo is a writing system carved with obsidian points or shark teeth. According to one tradition was invented to XII-XIII centuries AD C. Unique in the Pacific and Polynesia.

Tahiti, Atuona
Noa Noa
Checkpoint: Maison du Jouir de Paul Gauguin
Location: Atuona, Tahiti
Description: Noa Noa is a diary that reflects the impressions and thoughts of Paul Gauguin during his stay in Tahiti, where he was to find the lost paradise. This legendary work combines text and illustrations to reflect both the inner struggle of the great painter and his vision of the landscape of Tahiti, its people and their ancestral culture.











America (10)

Chile, Santiago de Chile
Pablo Neruda
Checkpoint: Pablo Neruda House "La Chascona"
Location: Calle Fernando Márquez de La Plata, 192. Santiago, Chile
Description: Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet, considered one of the largest and most influential of his age, being called by the novelist Gabriel García Márquez "the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language".
In one of the slopes of Cerro San Cristobal, specifically in the small street called Fernando Márquez de la Plata, there is one of the best known houses of Pablo Neruda. It's called "The Chascona" after Matilde Urrutia, his wife.

Argentina, Buenos Aires
Jorge Luís Borges
Checkpoint: Jose Luís Borges House, old Palermo
Location: Calle Jorge Luis Borges 2135. Buenos Aires, Argentina
Description: Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges was an Argentine writer, one of the lead authors of the twentieth century literature. According to Marcos Aguinis, few writers have influenced on men's imaginations.
Borges's childhood was spent in Palermo, a neighborhood that at that time was on the fringes of the city.

Uruguay, Montevideo
Mario Benedetti
Checkpoint: Bar San Rafael
Location: Montevideo, Uruguay
Description: In his later years, every morning breakfast in the Bar San Rafael the great writer, storyteller and writer Mario Benedetti, the poet of love: "Sometimes I got into a cafe / accompanied by my solitude / and wanted think and not think / because of the tumult outside corner / I was summoned by a simple silence ... "(Poem" In a coffee, "Witness for yourself, 2008)

Peru, Cuzco
Comentarios Reales de los Incas
Checkpoint: Inca Garcilaso House
Location: Calle Heladeros s/n. (corner Garcilaso Street). Cuzco, Peru
Descripción: The Comentarios Reales de los Incas is a book written by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the first mestizo writer of colonial Andean South America. The Comentarios Reales de los Incas is considered by most to be the unquestionable masterpiece of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and arguably the best prose of the colonial period in Peru.

Brasil, Salvador de Bahía
Jorge Amado and Zélia Gattai
Checkpoint: Fundaçao Casa de Jorge Amado
Location: Largo do Pelourinho, s/n, CEP 40025-280, Salvador-BA, Brasil
Description: Jorge Amado and Zélia Gattai, literary and committed partner. He, the most international Brazilian novelist, whose works are based on the life of his home state of Bahia, and in their political commitment denouncing social injustices. She, a writer and photographer was a symbol of strength, tenderness and perseverance of Brazilian women. Nearly 60 years of uninterrupted and unceasing love and struggle for freedom.

Cuba, La Habana
Ernest Miller Hemingway
Checpoint: Bar El Floridita
Location: Obispo Street No. 557. La Habana, Cuba
Description: Hemingway was one of the leading novelists and short story writers of the twentieth century. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for his entire work. He lived almost 20 years in Cuba, where he wrote his novel The Old Man and the sea.
According to the Cubans, one hot noon Ernest Hemingway visited for first time El Floridita , a bar restaurant in La Habana. He sat down and always will do it in the same place-in the first bench, place where a bust was unveiled in his honor in 1954.

Mexico, Mexico DF
Aztec codices
Checkpoint: Constitution Square (Well-know as “Zócalo”)
Location: Constitution Square, Mexico DF, Mexico
Description: It's called the Aztec codices to three ancient Mexico Nahuas documents, which are copies of lost documents dating back to pre-Columbian times.
The place where today is the Constitution Square was located the temple and the palace of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin.

USA, San Francisco
Generation Beat
Checkpoint: Vesuvio Café
Location: 255 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, USA
Description: The term Beat Generation refers to a group of American writers of the fifties, and the cultural phenomenon on which they wrote. Some defining elements are rejecting traditional American values, drug use, sexual freedom and a study of Eastern philosophy. The Cafe Vesuvius was a regular place for many writers of the Beat Generation.

USA, Asharoken
The Little Prince
Checkpoint: The Bevin House
Location: 77 Bevin Road, Asharoken. New York, USA
Description: This short story of French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery, may seem like a children's book by the way it is written and being the story on a simple principle, but in reality the book makes several profound and idealistic observations about life and human nature.
Antoine wrote it while staying at the Bevin House in Asharoken, New York.

Canada, Dawson
Jack London
Checkpoint: Jack London Interpretive Centre
Location: 8th Ave. and 1st St. Dawson City, Canada
Description: London and his brother-in-law, James Shepard, sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he would later set his first successful stories. The City of Dawson is featured prominently in the novels and short stories of famed American author, who lived in Dawson from October 1897 to June 1898.











Africa (7)

South Africa, Cape Town
Nadine Gordimer
Checkpoint: Clarke's BookStore
Location: 211 Long Street. Cape Town, South Africa
Description: Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1991. His books have always tried to address the social issue in South Africa, with the alienation of human behavior and racial segregation as a backdrop.
Clarke's BookStore is a legendary place where you can find books from Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana and of course all sorts of South African books, from poetry to ornithology.

Kenia, Nairobi
Karen Blixen
Checkpoint: Karen Blixen House
Location: Karen Blixen Museum, Karen Street, Nairobi, Kenia
Description: Karen Blixen was a Danish author who whote in his books experiences in Africa. Out of Africa (1937) is undoubtedly the novel that catapulted her to worldwide fame, the book inspired the award winning movie Out of Africa with Meryl Streep in the role of Karen and Robert Redford as Dennys Finch Hatton

Ethiopia, Aksum
Tablets of Stone
Checkpoint: Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion
Location: Aksum, Ethiopia
Description: According to Ethiopian tradition, the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion houses both the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments. The Legend said that was Menelik I, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who would carry the sacred objects to the land of Ethiopia.

Egipt, Alexandria
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Checkpoint: Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Location: El Shatby, Alexandría, Egipt
Description: The Ancient Library of Alexandria, was at the time the largest in the world. Located in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, believed to have been created in the early third century C. by Ptolemy I Soter and came to house up to 700,000 volumes. A new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, sponsored by UNESCO, was inaugurated in 2003 in the same city.

Mali, Timbuktu
Fondo Kati
Checkpoint: The Kati family’s library
Location: Timbuktu, Mali
Description: The Kati family’s library builds on the writings and collections left behind by Ali B. Ziyad al-Quti, a converted muslim from Toledo who established himself in the Timbuktu region in the 15th century. Today the Fondo Kati collection consists of 3 000 documents, in Arabic, Spanish and Hebrew. They deal with Islamic law, medicine, history, mysticism, grammar, astronomy and astrology, poetry and mathematics.

Mauritania, Chinguetti
Desert libraries
Checkpoint: Any of the five desert libraries
Location: Chinguetti, Mauritania
Description: In the village of Chinguetti, hidden amongst the encroaching dunes of the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, the inhabitants are the guardians of centuries-old manuscripts, amongst the oldest in Islam. The desert libraries remnants from the time when Chinguetti was a flourishing city along the caravan route, a cultural lighthouse for poets and scholars alike.

Marocco, Tanger
Ibn Battuta
Checkpoint: Tomb of Ibn Battuta
Location: Tanger, Marocco
Description: Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan berber scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla (Voyage). His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo.



Point of Arrival

Spain, Barcelona
Don Quixote of La Mancha
Point of Arrival: Miguel de Cervantes Accommodation in Barcelona
Location: Paseo de Colón 2. Barcelona, Spain
Description: The novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra has been described as the first modern novel and one of the best works of world literature.
As the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, the errant book also will end his adventures in Barcelona, symbolizing the end of his appeal by the world.of his journey through the world.