''The Last World'' () is a 1988 novel by the Austrian writer

Christoph Ransmayr Christoph Ransmayr (born 20 March 1954) is an Austrian writer. Life Born in Wels, Upper Austria, Ransmayr grew up in Roitham near Gmunden and the Traunsee. From 1972 to 1978 he studied philosophy and ethnology in Vienna. He worked there as ...

. Set in an inconsistent time period, it tells the story of a man, Cotta, who travels to Tomi to search for the poet Naso, who had settled there in political exile, after hearing rumours that Naso has died. In the town, Cotta encounters a number of characters from Ovid's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...

''. ''The Last World'' was published in English in 1990, translated by John E. Woods.

Reception

'' Kirkus Reviews'' called the book an "ambitious, stylish historical work". Robert Irwin wrote in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'': "This remarkable second novel by Christoph Ransmayr, a young Austrian novelist, carries the conviction of an ominous dream". Irwin first compared it to the works of

surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

painters, after which he wrote: "But the shape-shifting world in which Cotta conducts his quest owes more to Latin literature than to Surrealist theory. ... ''The Last World'', with its careful anachronisms and deformations, is a brilliant exercise in alternative literary history."

Richard Eder Richard Gray Eder (August 16, 1932 – November 21, 2014) was an American film reviewer and a drama critic. Life and career For 20 years, he was variously a foreign correspondent, a film reviewer and the drama critic for ''The New York Times''. ...

of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'' described the book as a "powerful allegory of rise, fall and change", and wrote:

There is nothing Olympian or didactic about Ransmayr's parable. It is told at extremes, in harsh images and bleak ellipses. It is strung along mysteries—Where is Ovid? Who are the townspeople whom Cotta encounters in Tomi?—and its tone is grotesque and frozen by turns.

Eder saw a flaw in how the townspeople of Tomi, unlike the characters in ''Metamorphoses'', fail to become touching to the reader, which makes the story "wooden". Eder wrote: "As a parable, nonetheless, it has a vivid and unsettling force." The English translation was awarded the 1991

Schlegel-Tieck Prize The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation award given by the Society of Authors in London. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000.

from the

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. , it represents over 12,000 members and ass ...

References

External links

American publicity page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Last World 1988 novels 20th-century Austrian novels German-language novels Novels by Christoph Ransmayr Novels set in Romania Cultural depictions of Ovid Works based on Metamorphoses