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Place Names in The Left Hand of God

Some readers have been puzzled (perhaps exasperated would be a better word) at the way in which the names of ‘real’ world places turn up jumbled together without rhyme or reason in the geography of the world of The Left Hand of God trilogy. I’d ask them to consider the following: Riga Sweden Egypt Belfast Greece Norfolk Manchester Hamburg Kent Warsaw Cambridge London Peterborough Syracuse Rome Amsterdam Potsdam Batavia Dunkirk Reading (not far from Lebanon) Dover (not far from Smyrna) Mansfield Stamford Norwich Hyde Park Troy Bangor (next to Nazareth not far from Bethlehem) Sunbury Palmyra Westminster Emmaeus Mt Carmel Delhi Berlin Peru. The list could go on. What do these absurdly disparate places have in common? They’re all towns, villages and small cities within 250 miles of New York (formerly New Amsterdam). The New World is saturated with the bizarrely juxtaposed names of the Old World.

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