What happens in The Last World is that Cotta, a 1st-century Roman literature lover, hears rumors that Ovid, exiled by Augustus Caesar to a sea-swept corner of the Empire, may have died. The ambiguity of the word 'last' ('letzte') - meant to connote both 'previous' and 'ultimate' - drives home Ransmayr's disturbing, heartening and hard-to-dispute notion that things change for both the better and worse in any era and that includes one giving rise to, say, Salman Rushdie, Jesse Helms and Vaclav Havel. Wood, translating from the German (Ransmayr is Austrian), wisely sees fit not to fool around with.

The ramifications of the past presaging the present and future are tidily suggested right at the get-go in Ransmayr's title, which John E.

seek relaxation by watching movie adaptations of old Greek myths projected on a local slaughterhouse wall. READING Christoph Ransmayr's The Last World is roughly equivalent to attending a multi-media production of 'Troilus and Cressida.' The point being made with a wily insouciance is that a decomposing world - where everything is rust and mildew, where the elements are continually in revolt - is a timeless world and that there is really nothing out of sync should a small town of circa 40 A.D.

The last world christoph ransmayr