In the Country of Last Things (Lernmaterialien)

In the Country of Last Things (Lernmaterialien)

book data

659 ratings, 3.86 average rating, 57 reviews (more data...)

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published

November 1st 2001 (first published 1987) by Diesterweg

binding

Paperback, 145 pages

characters

Anna Blume

isbn

3425040847 (isbn13: 9783425040844)

description

A Journey in a post-apocolyptic urban street setting, possibly New York, where protagonist Anna Blume is searching for her brother, William.

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 879)

All ratings | 5 stars (164) | 4 stars (260) | 3 stars (187) | 2 stars (49) | 1 star (11) | avg 3.86

all | this edition

Chris

Chris rated it:

11/22/08

Read in November, 2008

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. An...more

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Michael

Michael rated it:

07/20/07

bookshelves: all-time-favorites, slipstream

Quite possibly the most grim book I have ever read, with the possible exception of Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'. A book like this, written by anyone but Auster, would be an ordeal to read; however, Auster is such a craftsman that even the most hopeless of circumstances remain gripping.

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Mary

Mary rated it:

06/09/08

Read in June, 2008

Every time I read another book by Paul Auster, I'm always disappointed when it's not as good as "City of Glass", but now I'm wondering if maybe I was wrong about that too, and that if I re-read that story now, I won't like that very much anymore, either.

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Thurston Hunger

Thurston rated it:

08/16/08

Read in August, 2008

recommends it for: Saudi Arabian princes and the top 5% wealthiest in the US

An interesting (and much earlier) contrast to Cormac's "The Road", the path taken here while not as harrowing is alarming. The tone here offers feminine compassion to offset McCarthy's macho run through the gauntlet of the grotesque. I "enjoyed" (wrong word, but you know what I mean) reading this, although I think Auster at times clutches at plausibility when he might have embraced pure allegory.

Allegory though is somewhat on display, with the book's notions of Runners an...more

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Don

Don rated it:

(review of isbn 0140097058)

06/22/08

Read in May, 2008

Paul Auster is probably best known for his New York Trilogy, a series of three surreal and philosophical novels that borrow from the detective noir tradition. I enjoyed the trilogy, so I recently picked up another of his works, In the Country of Last Things. The story follows Anna Blume on her quest to find her lost brother in a ruined, unnamed city suffering from a total economic collapse. The streets are filled with starving scavengers and thieves, buildings mysteriously collapse when n...more Paul Auster is probably best known for his New York Trilogy, a series of three surreal and philosophical novels that borrow from the detective noir tradition. I enjoyed the trilogy, so I recently picked up another of his works, In the Country of Last Things. The story follows Anna Blume on her quest to find her lost brother in a ruined, unnamed city suffering from a total economic collapse. The streets are filled with starving scavengers and thieves, buildings mysteriously collapse when no one is looking, law and order have completely failed, and the quickly changing series of governments' only apparent success is the collection of waste products--including human corpses—to fuel the energy plants providing the city with electricity. The city's problems extend beyond just the material however. The entropy slowly eating the city extends even into the epistemological realm. No one seems to know what has happened to the city, or what lies out in the country beyond it. Everything is gossip, rumor, or lies. As things and people disappear, the memory of them disappears as well, and even the surviving residents of the city often forget or confuse their own origins and history. The situation in the city will seem familiar to anyone who has read Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren.

Anna Blume voluntary travels to the city from abroad, looking for her journalist brother who disappeared into the city months ago while reporting for his newspaper. Quickly accepting the hopelessness of her quest, she focuses on surviving in the city. Becoming a licensed scavenger, Anna manages to purchase one of the most important tools left in the city, a shopping cart, which she immediately tethers to herself (to discourage thieves), and proceeds to roll though the city scavenging for anything of value. Half-starved consumers rolling carts through the ruins of civilization is one of the most disturbingly humorous images of the book. As the narrative proceeds, Anna falls into a series of relationships and situations that initially promise a relief from life in the city but which ultimately fail to protect her from the entropy destroying it. First, she joins up with a pair of parent surrogates who care and provide for her, although she ends up caring for them as they grow ill. Next, she falls in a love with a man living in the ruins of the city's library who is attempting to write a book about the city. His book is a jumble of detail that he can't organize, just as the library itself is nothing more than an unorganized mass of books that are good for nothing except burning as fuel. When the library is destroyed, Anna ends up at the Woburn House, the last remaining homeless shelter of the city and the last place of peace and plenty. But even Woburn House is finally shown to be an illusion, and, when the money runs out, it ends up no better off than the rest of the city. Realizing that there is no hope left in the city, Anna and her friends prepare to defy the government and to flee into the hinterland.

While I believe the narrative is intended to be dream-like and disconnected, the transitions between Anna's various 'lives' in the city are often abrupt and forced. The dangers of the city, including murder, rape, starvation, exposure, and cannibalism, are often reported by Anna, but are rarely experienced directly in the text, which distances the reader from Anna's experiences. In the end, I cared little for Anna, her predicament, or her friends. Fans of Auster's other novels or other fantastical, surreal works--such as the writings of Kafka or Delany----will probably enjoy In the Country of Last Things, although it is weaker than Auster's other works....less

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Laura

Laura rated it:

(review of isbn 0140097058)

06/28/07

Read in June, 2007

This review is also available at www.hurricanelaura.blogspot.co....

I reached the last few pages of this book on the subway this morning and, very reluctantly, put it back in my bag and headed to work. But I couldn't stand it so I surreptitiously read the last few pages at my desk, and I'm writing this only seconds away from finishing it.

I loved this book. It is one of the best post-apocalyptic stories I've ever read -...more This review is also available at www.hurricanelaura.blogspot.co....

I reached the last few pages of this book on the subway this morning and, very reluctantly, put it back in my bag and headed to work. But I couldn't stand it so I surreptitiously read the last few pages at my desk, and I'm writing this only seconds away from finishing it.

I loved this book. It is one of the best post-apocalyptic stories I've ever read -- vivid, eventful, character-driven, terrifying but with enough moments of humanity and hope to keep you invested.

This is the story of Anna Blume, a woman who has come to a ruined city in search of her brother, William. The city itself is a mystery -- I've read reviews that suggest it is New York, but I really didn't feel that it mattered. I like it much better as a city without a name, a city that could be anywhere. The city has collapsed, and probably the entire nation has also collapsed. Corrupt, inefficient regimes come and go in the city, but most of the population lives in a kind of starved, desperate stupor, scavenging for food and any objects they can sell to buy food. There are suicide cults of various kinds, centers where you can pay to be euthanized, and it is against the law to bury the dead, since they have to be burned for fuel.

Anna has an almost picaresque journey through the city -- we see the various micro-worlds through her misadventures of survival. She starts as a scavenger, looking for objects she can sell to keep herself alive, and falls in with an elderly woman who also scavenges, but who has the good fortune of an apartment so Anna doesn't have to sleep outside. She eventually is turned out of this apartment, and finds herself living amongst the remaining intelligentsia, who are inhabiting various rooms of the National Library.

Here she falls in with Sam, a journalist (and a colleague of her missing brother) who is writing a book that documents the decline and fall of the city. The two become lovers, and this is one of the most interesting sections of the book. Auster combines extreme desperation with moments of clarity in dizzying episodes and the physical details of Anna's life, in particular, make this story so incredibly evocative. In a way, it reminds me a little bit of "Oliver Twist" -- the lost child, falling in with wiser and more complicated characters. Anna starts out that way, but she isn't the foil that Oliver was for Dickens -- she's a more well-rounded, complete character.

I also compared this book to Jim Crace's recent book "The Pesthouse", except I felt Auster's book was far better. Crace seemed to shrink from examining the really interesting developments of a post-cataclysmic landscape, as if this struck him as too "science-fictiony" and a little silly. (And it definitely can be, in the hands of the wrong writer.) He had a few really wonderful moments in that book that he didn't exploit nearly as well as he could have. In contrast, Auster seems to luxuriate in those features, and devotes almost a little too much time to them in the opening of the book.

In fact, my one criticism with this book is that he takes a little too long to get into his plot, and spends a little too much time establishing the landcscape. Readers are savvy enough these days to accept an apocalyptic city and recognize it immediately -- they don't need as much establishment as Auster gives them.

According to IMDB, this book might be made into a movie, filmed in Argentina, with Eva Green as the main character. My little "prediction" for 2008 is that we're going to see a lot of these post-apocalyptic stories adapted for film - they might not make it all the way to the screen, but there will be deals and there will be rumors. Hollywood probably sat up and took notice when McCarthy won the Pulitzer for "The Road", and I'm sure someone will think to adapt Crace's book as well. (In fairness, it might make a really good movie.)

...less

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Tim

Tim rated it:

01/16/08

Dystopian fiction has always been a difficult genre to pull off well. Authors tend to either saturate the reader in the physicality of their dysfunctional society to the point of losing any frame of reference for the reader (e.g. The Road), or they leave so many holes in their backstory that you have difficulty suspending your disbelief (e.g. Children of Men).

Auster splits the difference by leaving out the cause of his imaginary city’s isolation, and any indication of why the rest of his ...more

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Aude

Aude rated it:

11/10/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: everyone

This is a kind of futuristic book depicting a broken down city whose government both imprisons the people within and is also not present. You can go into the city, but once you are in you can not come back out for governmental fear that you may report what you have seen. It kind of gives you the feeling of being stuck in a country like North Korea. You have no clue what is going on in the world around you, all there is is you and that city.
The main character is a girl who comes to the city in...more

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Suzanne

Suzanne rated it:

04/16/08

bookshelves: apocalyptic, fiction

Read in April, 2008

I really enjoyed this book. It wasn't long but it was interesting and I finished it quickly. I have really enjoyed reading this author. This is only my second stab at it (I read the New York Trilogy) earlier this year) but so far I am impressed.

This book was an apocalyptic story about a woman's struggles through an unnamed city that has been virtually destroyed. I think the most interesting thing about it is the fact that so many questions are left unanswered, the book is much more thou...more

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Karen

Karen rated it:

06/26/08

bookshelves: fiction, unfinished

I didn't get very far into this book. I love Auster's writing, but I had trouble dwelling in this dystopia. Maybe I'm just not into dystopian books; I know this one reminded me of Doris Lessing's Memoirs of a Survivor, which brought up mixed emotions. Maybe i just wasn't in the mood for it. Anyhow, I've put Last Things down for a while.

My one concern is the title. It is beautiful, but it doesn't necessarily work. I'll give you a demo:

Me: Yeah, this book by Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things.
...more

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Radioanngal

Radioanngal added it

11/22/08

Hmmm, what to learn from Paul Auster. Angst? Like I need anymore of that. I like Auster mostly for his journalistic style of writing. Very Hemingway.

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Debbie

Debbie rated it:

10/29/07

bookshelves: brain-food, good-fiction-reads

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: people who need to wake up

Paul Auster is one of my favourite authors. I began with NY Trilogy, Invention of Solitude and now, this book has really kicked me in my gut - in a fabulous way that says, 'Kick me one more time!'

In the Country of Last Things is so bleak, painful and wrenching to read, and because it is so, it makes life now so savoury. For a book, published in '87, it's so prophetic. Human depravity, greed, madness, all combine in this miasma of a city. It kinda reminds me of the grotesque-ness of Survivor an...more

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Gemma

Gemma rated it:

07/23/08

A dystopian tale in which a young woman searches the mysterious city of the title for her lost brother. In the city food shortages lead to riots, suicide cults abound and scavangers roam the streets tied to their shopping carts. Buildings and streets vanish without trace overnight and words themselves are beginning to lose their meaning. Everything that looks as if it may provide a glimpse of meaning ( the book her journalist lover is writing, the baby they nearly have, the community she ends up...more

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Suzanne

Suzanne rated it:

04/10/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in October, 2007

This was a completely random pick from the used bookstore. I don't do random picks very often - I figure there are enough books and authors already on my to-read list, so there hardly seems enough time to experiment. But I liked this one. I finished it, wondering a little if I'd missed out on some important theme, but I think that may have been a theme in itself. You pursue and pursue, and eventually you still just lose what you were looking for. It was a quick, easy read, but also substanti...more

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Mike

Mike rated it:

(review of isbn 0140097058)

05/25/08

This was the second Auster book I checked out of the library, after The Brooklyn Follies, based solely on flipping to a random page and enjoying what I read. Auster writes some of the clearest prose of any writer I've encountered, and so, like his other books, I found this one fascinating on that level -- he really creates a world, rather than simply a story, in a way that's entirely entrancing.

I found the end a bit disappointing, perhaps because by then I realized I was less invested in the ...more

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Jayme

Jayme rated it:

02/03/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: paul auster fans

not a bad book, but not one of my favorites from auster. written 20 years ago, it offers a striking look at what our own country could become. a first-person protagonist is lost in an unnamed country under militia rule. its residents are left to fend for themselves-selling off their possessions to buy food, most homeless, no longer allowed to bury their dead, who fuel the city. it is a frightening portrayal of our future, but still has the lonely humanity i've come to know and love about auster'...more

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Kurtis

Kurtis rated it:

04/05/07

In retrospect, I'll give this five stars... it might be one of Auster's best works. It's the kind of thing they read and discuss in Freshman comp classes. The premise is simple... it's a story about what feels like this horrible post-apocalyptic nightmare nation, but most of what he presents are things that are actually happening right now in the world. So the message is just that there's no need to create nightmare visions of the future. We live in one (we just blind ourselves to it).

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Nicole

Nicole rated it:

(review of isbn 0140097058)

09/12/08

This book reminded me of an allegorical version of The Road. I found I read it very slowly, to catch all of Auster's meanings and descriptions and not just gloss over the forward movement of the plot. I was talking to my friend Mary, and I agree with her, however, that when you get to the end you are a little disappointed that there is not more of an arc to the story or even the tiniest bit of resolution. It's like a TV show that gets canceled midseason.

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Mary

Mary rated it:

06/22/08

Read in June, 2008

This is basically what I want out of a post-apocalyptic story. There are tiny ships in tiny bottles - moments of real loveliness inside the hardness of how dark people can be in moments of desperation and grief. The writing is smart, engaging, and lush. Though it could have benefited from some chapters, so I wouldn't have felt obliged to read all 200ish pages in one sitting, I think it's telling that I was motivated enough to read it in one sitting.

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aaron

aaron rated it:

(review of isbn 0140097058)

03/29/07

A short, dark, sentimental and satirical personal journal of a woman living in America after the great collapse. Slightly over the top references, but very well written and very engaging book. A quick read that stay with you and maybe even stick to your dreams.

Paul Auster demonstrates that he truly understands the written landscape and isn’t afraid to take a step away from the slightly off centered tale to tell a fantastic post apocalyptic one.

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