Atlas

Every novel worth reading has a map in the front. Here is Hill Mole's: the narrator's world from a childhood in Honolulu to the District and its suburbs, Berlin, and a 1990 flight over Russia to Kathmandu. Click a place to see its entries.

Hill Mole: A Map of the Mole's World, drawn like an antique book map in black and red ink on parchment. Red dashed routes run from Honolulu to Washington, along the Pacific coast from Acapulco to Marina del Rey, across the Atlantic to Berlin, and over Russia to Kathmandu. Insets show the District and its Virginia suburbs inside the Beltway, with a security blimp overhead, and the island of Oahu. A star-nosed mole sits in the title cartouche and forms the north point of the compass rose.

Places

Numbers are entry numbers. Bold ones are entries set in that place.

  • Honolulu and Oahu: Growing up haole: JROTC, the Rangers, and war games in the jungle. 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 46, 87, 104, 159, 180
  • Washington, DC: Where nobody is truly private sector. 1, 2, 9, 10, 12, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26, 54, 66, 92, 104, 110, 131, 135, 143, 147, 148, 149, 154, 155, 159, 160, 192
  • Capitol Hill and the Capitol: The bike messenger's open city, and the camouflage of khakis and blue blazers. 9, 12, 23, 94, 104, 110, 223, 307
  • The Mall: Acid, a bench, and W.'s lesson about looking. 66
  • The Treasury: The narrator's own brush with a security review. 2, 60
  • Zack's: Camels, pool, and bottles of Bud. 40, 41, 42, 92
  • Langley and McLean: Where the kids know whose dads are CIA. 131, 161
  • Arlington: 163, 192
  • Alexandria: The dive bar decorated in business cards. 80
  • Dulles: W. flies in from Berlin; the recruiters park you near a bus stop. 25, 154
  • Groton, Connecticut: Submarine parts passed through a hole in the wall. 17
  • Acapulco to Marina del Rey: Months under sail with W. and Otto Helm. 87
  • Guatemala: One of W.'s childhoods. 104
  • Monrovia, Liberia: Another of W.'s childhoods. 104
  • Brussels: Where S. lived, and M. couldn't visit. 79, 293
  • Berlin: The poor but sexy years. 25, 104, 143, 147, 159, 226, 231
  • Saint Petersburg: 47, 285
  • Kathmandu, 1990: The bargain charter over a Soviet Union full of aircraft carcasses. 44, 47, 156, 285
  • Afghanistan: The graveyard of empires. 211, 227, 229, 233, 234, 235, 236, 239, 240, 241, 243, 246, 249, 285, 288

The map was drawn with AI image tools from a prompt built from the book's own places and journeys, then corrected by hand. See also the glossary, the index, and the notes.