Paul Auster

Gerd Ulmer

Friderike Ulmer

In the Country of Last Things.

Usually for a book as short as this I'll read it and forget about it. It wasn't so much the plot, as the atmosphere of the book that's stayed with me. I still feel hollowed out, like story has taken something from me and is keeping it, and I have dreams of the city even now, months later.

'That is how it works in the City. Every time you think you know the answer to a question, you discover that the question makes no sense . . .' This is the story of Anna Blume and her journey to find her lost brother, William, in the unnamed City. Like the City itself, however, it is a journey that is doomed, and so all that is left is Anna's unwritten account of what happened. Paul Auster takes us to an unspecified and devastated world in which the self disappears amidst the horrors that surround us. But this is not just an imaginary, futuristic world: like the settings of Kafka stories, it is one that echoes our own, and in doing so addresses some of our darker legacies. In the Country of Last Things is a tense, psychological take on the dystopian novel. It continues Auster's deep exploration of his central themes: the modern city, the mysteries of storytelling, and the elusive and unstable nature of truth.

In the Country of Last Things

Michael Reali

First you think it's a book about a city. 
Then you start caring for Anna, wandering the streets of the city as a scavenger. And you think the book is about a woman who's desperately trying to find her missing brother. But you quickly realise it's not about that either. 
It's a book about Anna's desire to cling to life, to cling to her story. Or is it?
 You finally have to admit it is none of that, and all of those things at the same time. 
What the book is really about is you, and me, and the reader of Anna's letter and, ultimately, the telling of her story. It's about time and life, and our constant way of reinventing ourselves to be our story and build upon it. 
It's about the way we strive to inhabit every new moment of our lives as if we belonged to that moment, as if we understood each new turn of events, as if we cherished each instant of this ever dying present that's already passed.

humita gomita

Aaron McCollough

'That is how it works in the City. Every time you think you know the answer to a question, you discover that the question makes no sense . . .' This is the story of Anna Blume and her journey to find her lost brother, William, in the unnamed City. Like the City itself, however, it is a journey that is doomed, and so all that is left is Anna's written account of what happened. For In the Country of Last Things Paul Auster takes us to an unspecified and devastated world in which the self disappears amidst the horrors that surround it. But this is not just an imaginary, futuristic world, it is a world that echoes our own, and in doing so addresses some of our darker legacies.

edith w.

Miguel Angel

Tarlan Asadli

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

lizbet koval

Anna Blume, searching for her brother who has disappeared, recounts her wanderings through a modern urban reprise of the Dark Ages where she becomes a member of a scavenger class in search of objects from the past

In the Country of Last Things.

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