Paul Auster
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 188 pages Rating: 3.87 | 11002 Users | 818 Reviews
Identify Epithetical Books In the Country of Last Things
| Title | : | In the Country of Last Things |
| Author | : | Paul Auster |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 188 pages |
| Published | : | (first published 1987) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Science Fiction. Dystopia. Apocalyptic. Post Apocalyptic. Literature. American |
Narrative Toward Books In the Country of Last Things
A dystopian epistolary novel. In the Country of Last Things takes the form of a letter from a young woman named Anna Blume to a childhood friend. Anna has ventured into an unnamed city that has collapsed into chaos and disorder. In this bleak environment, no industry takes place and most of the population collects garbage or scavenges for objects to resell. City governments are unstable and are concerned only with collecting human waste and corpses for fuel. Anna has entered the city to search for her brother William, a journalist, and it is suggested that the Blumes come from a world to the East which has not collapsed.Mention Books In Pursuance Of In the Country of Last Things
| Original Title: | In the Country of Last Things |
| ISBN: | 3425040847 (ISBN13: 9783425040844) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Anna Blume, Anne Blume, Samuel Farr, Victoria Woburn, Boris Stepanovich |
Rating Epithetical Books In the Country of Last Things
Ratings: 3.87 From 11002 Users | 818 ReviewsDiscuss Epithetical Books In the Country of Last Things
Written in first person; depicts a world filled with hollow men, only occasionally brightened by definite and sympathetic personalities; overflowing with some really amazing and meaningful sentences: I might be talking of Hearts of Darkness, but I must admit that Auster really did catch my attention with this short (albeit longer than Conrad's ) novel. From the very first page we found ourselves thrown in a postapocalyptic world, with no clear contest. The world, the country, is utterly doomed,Imagine an unknown city in the near future, populated almost wholly by street dwellers. City that is undergoing a catastrophic economic decline. Buildings collapse daily, driving huge numbers of citizens into the streets, where they starve or die of exposure if they aren't murdered by other vagrants first.Auster (my beloved author) uses his usual tremendous power with words to convey the depth of all the darkest of the dark.Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you must
Auster plunges us into a dystopian nightmare in which love, dignity and compassion are still possible. His simple, clear prose unerringly trace his characters' inner logicdespite the seemingly fortuitous unfolding of events. (I'm assuming it is an early work.) Afterwards, I found myself sitting very quietly, the way you do when something momentous has passed.
In this novel, Paul Auster has painted a brutally beautiful portrait of a society in collapse, and the ways humanity finds ways not only to go on in the face of horrific desolation, but to retain its soul. There's a "dark fairy tale meets Dickensian social realism" vibe to this novel. I could easily picture this adapted into a film by Terry Gilliam -- he and Auster seem to share a particular post-apocalyptic aesthetic of the bizarre and the grotesque. (view spoiler)[The story follows privileged
I close the covers of this book with a sense of foreboding and uncertainty. The narrative is a kissing cousin to Dhalgren , and is a city only a little less shifty than Bellona. It isn't per se dystopian (too anarchic?), nor is it really "apocalyptic" (there's been no obvious end of the world) but it's disturbed and disturbing and turned upside down. It's an epistolary novel, and as such conjures up comparisons with The Handmaid's Tale , but less linear. It's harder to guess where this goes
"The weather is in constant flux. A day of sun followed by a day of rain, a day of snow followed by a day of fog, warm then cool, wind then stillness, a stretch of bitter cold, and then today, in the middle of winter, an afternoon of fragrant light, warm to the point of merely sweaters." In the Country of Last Things was published in 1987 and set sometime in the future. That future could be close at hand, going by those couple of sentences. They perfectly describe the winters we've been having
I am ridiculously impressed with this book thus far - post-apocalyptic fiction is absolutely my favorite genre, and this is such a different take on it that I haven't been able to stop reading. Typically, nearly the entire population is already dead or dying, whereas Auster has entire cities still squabbling and struggling to survive. Far more plausible. Of course, more and more people would die as fresh water becomes scarce, food unavailable in markets, sewage systems cease to function, etc.
0 Comments