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A review by brynhammond
The Last World by Christoph Ransmayr
4.0
I enjoyed this fantasy on the Metamorphoses come to life, if largely for its gorgeous description. Ovid I remember for his soliloquies and this is a book without characters, so I'm not sure how 'like' Ovid it is.
The town on the Black Sea has early twentieth-century machinery, and these struck me as props just as you'd wheel them onto a stage, and set Richard III, say, in a fascist 30s Britain. This novel talks about totalitarianism through Augustan Rome. Cotta who goes in search of Ovid is a 'fugitive of the state', an objector/escapee. And Ovid's exile -- the story I was most keen to follow here was how he upsets the state, in his past, and came to be banished.
A shame my cover isn't on the edition list; it's fascinating and indescribable. For instance, there's a glossy dead fish with a string of glossy beads dripping from its eye. And there's a great gold-foil chicken's foot on the back. Against a rusty iron/mechanistic background: it suits the book.
I must comment on the disservice done the novel by its official descriptions. Mine says on its flap: "The Last World is destined to become one of the most important and remarkable novels of our time." Which is echoed in the Goodreads description. Says who? How to get readers off-side. I'm almost ashamed to be seen with this, lest my friends think me a pretentious twat. Don't blame the book for its blurb, people.
The town on the Black Sea has early twentieth-century machinery, and these struck me as props just as you'd wheel them onto a stage, and set Richard III, say, in a fascist 30s Britain. This novel talks about totalitarianism through Augustan Rome. Cotta who goes in search of Ovid is a 'fugitive of the state', an objector/escapee. And Ovid's exile -- the story I was most keen to follow here was how he upsets the state, in his past, and came to be banished.
A shame my cover isn't on the edition list; it's fascinating and indescribable. For instance, there's a glossy dead fish with a string of glossy beads dripping from its eye. And there's a great gold-foil chicken's foot on the back. Against a rusty iron/mechanistic background: it suits the book.
I must comment on the disservice done the novel by its official descriptions. Mine says on its flap: "The Last World is destined to become one of the most important and remarkable novels of our time." Which is echoed in the Goodreads description. Says who? How to get readers off-side. I'm almost ashamed to be seen with this, lest my friends think me a pretentious twat. Don't blame the book for its blurb, people.