Is dialogue possible between the imaginary representation of the world and its scholarly counterpart ? The article aims to show, by analyzing Philippe Claudel’s novel, that the world invented by the writer carries knowledge which resonates with that of the geographer. However, the lack of any reference to a reality located in time and space seems to place Mister Lihn’s story outside the world. This is precisely the point : this absence shows the existential condition of the rootless person through the image of a country that cannot be named or mapped. By depicting the exile through his relations to the space and to the landscape, the writer tells of the experience of being uprooted, more generally of being subjected to exclusion. Beyond that, he offers a reflection on geographicity.