A young cartographer leaves Germany for Amsterdam. In the seventeenth century, it is the promised land for map makers. He finds work with Master Blaeu: ‘I dare to say, I am more familiar with the seas than those who cross them.’

Far more uncertainties plague him when it comes to his relationship with his landlady, his first love. Why is he sometimes allowed to share her bed, while other times ignored so entirely? And how to find your way in a rapidly changing metropolis, a city in which old patriarchal patterns are being challenged?

The Cartographer and the World beautifully shows how we try to get a grip on the world in images and words and how, vice versa, those images and words shape our vision of the world.