Ankh-morpork

Ankh-Morpork

Ankh-Morpork is a fictional city-state which prominently features in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of fantasy novels. Though on first glance, fantasy style medieval, Ankh-Morpork is very much a parody of a modern, multi-cultural metropolis. It may bring to mind London or New York City, several centuries mixed into one, with elements of renaissance Florence (compare the ultra-rational dictator Lord Vetinari who certainly has read or even written himself the Discworld-equivalent of Macchiavelli's "Il Principe"). Pratchett describes this biggest city of Discworld as on the far side of corrupt and polluted, and as subject to outbreaks of comedic violence and brouhaha on a fairly regular basis. Ankh-Morpork is also the mercantile capital of the Discworld. With the proceeding of the series, Ankh-Morpork is more and more portrayed as multi-cultural (which in this case means multi-species, with increasingly prominent populations of creatures such as dwarfs, trolls, and werewolves) and struggling with modern real-world challenges. Even when it is under attack from a dragon, the vegetable carts still have to come in.