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The work of Per Olov Enquist, one of the most important contemporary Swedish authors, is known far beyond Sweden's and Europe’s borders, and thus even received in North America. A great many of his fictional documentary worksand dramatic plays, the biographies of poets such Hans Christian Andersen, Selma Lagerlöf, Knut Hamsun, and August Strindberg,as well as the bestselling novels Lewis Journey, The Royal Physician's Visit and The Book about Blanche and Marie, have secured a firm position for this Norrland author in the canon of world literature. The continuous transgression of the bordersbetween historical facts and their fictionalization builds the basic characteristic of Enquist's literature. For Enquist, the goalof writing is to sound out the “innermost space of human existence.” He is eager to explore those secrets and ambiguities thatunderlie certain historical events or individual life stories. How is individual life determined? And how do individuals findtheir place in the world? In several of his works, the author uses the metaphor of drawing topographical maps to illustrate thesearch for one's own identity as an attempt to position oneself in the world. Starting from his memory of lying on the kitchenfloor as a young boy and drawing maps of his native village Hjoggböle, the area around Bureå, the Västerbotten and Norrlandregion as well as of his native country Sweden, Enquist reveals to his readers what it is that he considers literature to be: thecompression of real signs into a fictional space which resembles reality, but, at the same time, moves beyond the boundariesof reality. Through an analytical synopsis of those works that use the motif of map-drawing as a central theme and often referto each other in direct intertextual reference, namely the novel Captain Nemo's Library, the essay collection Kartritarna ['Thecartographers'], and Enquist's biography Ett annat liv ['A different life'], this article examines the metaphorical function andpoetological meaning that the depiction of the author's own region and home as well as references to his own life story andorigin have in Enquist's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]