Christoph Ransmayr Boeken

The Lost World is a modern masterpiece that follows a young man's quest for the exiled poet Ovid and his lost work. Set in a visionary landscape blending ancient and twentieth-century elements, it explores themes of exile, censorship, and environmental decay, making it a profound and timely cultural fable.

A tragic accident unfolds as a longboat plunges over the Great Falls, leading to the drowning of five passengers. The Lockmaster, tasked with ensuring safe river navigation, faces scrutiny when his son suspects foul play rather than an accident. Driven by the need for answers, the son, a hydraulic engineer knowledgeable about river dynamics, embarks on a quest to uncover the truth behind the disaster and locate his missing father, raising questions about responsibility and the nature of the tragedy.

A man goes in search of the Roman poet Ovid, banished to the end of the world. He finds that Ovid's personality and stories have undergone a sea-change, and have fragmented themselves into lots of clues - people, bizarre events, odd stretches of landscape, and a story emerges. From the Inside Flap: The poet Ovid, in his distress over his banishment from Rome, consigns the manuscript of his masterpiece, Metamorphoses, to the flames; years later, when rumors of his death reach Rome, his youthful admirer Cotta follows him to the remote Black Sea port of Tomi. Out of this story Christoph Ransmayr has fashioned an astonishing novel about a journey of adventure that has become Europe's most recent critical and best-selling literary sensation. The Last World is the story of a quest. As Cotta, following a trail of clues Ovid has left behind, searches for the exiled poet and his lost work, he discovers in the rust-corroded town of Tomi an ominous scene suffused with and dominated by Ovidian mythology, a transformed place where the ancient world meets the twentieth century. Cotta is lured into a visionary landscape that impersonates Ovid's vanished poem in which the familiar is forever transmuted in new and wondrous ways. In this world the village idiot turns to stone, the ravishingly beautiful whore disappears from the face of the earth, and the ropemaker takes on the guise of a wolf. These and other singular events furnish the pieces of a puzzle that Cotta assembles into a dramatic and bewitching story--a political and cultural fable about the end of time, the last world. Already acclaimed as a modern masterpiece and currently being translated into thirty languages, The Last World is destined to become one of the most important novels of our time. Ransmayr writes with dazzling power and sensuously charged language about the endlessly shifting flow of time, the lusty cycle of life in which the carrion of the past forever gives birth to the new. A metaphysical thriller both compelling and profound, The Last World draws the reader into a universe governed by the power of mythology, a world of decay on the brink of apocalypse. A novel about exile, censorship, and the destruction of the planet-as well as its constant renewal--The Last World is a cultural and political fable that is blazingly topical, yet timeless. "A brilliant exercise in alternative literary history...Mr. Ransmayr's book is all of a piece--intensely visualized, dense with magical images, and offering many obscure satisfactions."--The New York Times Book Review "Strange and haunting.... [The novel's] smooth blend of gritty detail and high fantasy...resembles the magic realism of Garcia Marquez."--The New Republic "As a parable...it has a vivid and unsettling force."--Los Angeles Times "Original, unusual, and beautifully written, The Last World is a book of many pleasures, as shifting and elusive in its meanings as it is vivid and specific in the images it evokes."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "An allegory of the effects of a repressive state on the survival of artistic thought.... The Last World arrives in America flying the banners of European acclaim; now that it's here, run another couple of flags up poles."--The Washington Post Book World

Das Geheimnis des Erzählens - Zum Werk von Christoph Ransmayr. Christoph Ransmayr erzählt in einem langen Gespräch von den Wegen seines Schreibens. Ins Innere seiner Geschichten folgen ihm drei seiner Übersetzer und zwei Wissenschaftler, die mit der Herausgeberin Insa Wilke über sein Werk gesprochen haben. Sie erzählen davon, welche eigenen Vorstellungswelten sich auf den imaginären Reisen geöffnet haben. So entsteht in den mündlichen und schriftlichen Korrespondenzen ein Buch über die Rätselhaftigkeit der Materie und die Erkundung der Welt im Schreiben, gewidmet einem der bedeutendsten Künstler der Gegenwartsliteratur. Eine Einladung, sich auf den Weg zu machen ins Unbekannte. »Schreiben gleicht manchmal dem Weg in die Wildnis: Da wie dort öffnen sich scheinbar grenzenlose, menschenleere Räume, in denen es aber nur wenige gangbare Wege gibt.« (Christoph Ransmayr)

Nejvýznamnějším dílo Christopha Ransmayra. Hlavní postava románu, Cotta Maximus Messalinus, se z císařského Říma vydává po stopách Publia Ovidia Nasa do jeho vyhnanství ve vzdálené Tomidě, železném městě na březích Černého moře. Cotta chce najít údajně mrtvého básníka a objevit jeho snad ztracené dílo Metamorphoses. Zároveň uniká z totalitního spořádaného světa do mýtické divoké říše na okraji, či dokonce za hranicemi civilizace. Hledání básníka se stává balancováním mezi rozumem a bláznovstvím, při němž jedinou jistotou zůstává neustálá proměna v duchu Ovidiova díla: Nikomu nezůstane jeho podoba. Spolu s ostatními obyvateli Tomidy prožívá Cotta postupný rozklad železného města. Apokalypsa, kterou ve svých vyprávěních vykreslil Ovidius, se v jejich světě naplňuje. Každý z obyvatel Tomidy nese jméno jednoho z hrdinů Ovidiových příběhů a spolu se jménem i osud bohů a lidí antických bájí. Ransmayrův Poslední svět je postmoderním místem-nemístem, v němž se antika prolíná se současností a mýtus se skutečností.