Page "The Fountains of Paradise" Paragraph 16

The story is set in the fictional equatorial island country of Taprobane, which Clarke has described as " about ninety percent congruent with the island of Ceylon ( now Sri Lanka )", south of its real world location.

The ruins of the palace at Yakkagala as described in the book very closely match the real-life ruins at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka.

The mountain on which the space elevator is built is called Sri Kanda in the book, and bears a strong resemblance to the real mountain Sri Pada.