How did the idea for THE MAP THIEF originate?
Heather Terrell: Not long ago, my brother Coley asked me if I’d ever heard of the 15th-century Chinese Admiral Zheng He. When I answered no, he was surprised. After all, he and I have each spent considerable time in China, where the admiral is becoming legendary. Coley explained that, in the early 1400s, Zheng He had assembled a naval fleet so vast and so technologically superior that the Europeans’ ships of the same time period seemed like bath toys in comparison. The presumed prowess of this armada has inspired theories that Zheng He had discovered the world decades before the famed European explorers. I was intrigued. So, I pored over early world maps from this time period, and I learned something curious, a historical mystery of sorts. Several of the very earliest European world maps — dating from the mid-1400s and beyond — showed lands and bodies of water that would not be officially “discovered” by the Europeans for decades. My imagination soared. I wondered whether a scrap o
