Reading 1001 discussion

I read this one for my randomiser, and thought while it was successfully imaginative in the surrealist/fantasy elements, I’m not sure if I really got the bigger point or themes out of it. I ended up giving it 3 stars.

The story follows a man named Costa as he travels to the oldest continuously inhabited city in modern day Romania- Tomis (inhabited since 600 bce)- to meet the poet Naso (better known to me as Ovid). Along the way, many creatures and figures from Naso’s famous work metamorphoses are drawn into the narrative. Obviously this adds a high degree of fantasy, as does the fact that this story seems to be written without a consistent timeframe and era. Which is kind of cool and helps establish the city as this contained fantasy realm in its own bubble, outside of our time and space. Costa meets figures like Arachne, conflicts involving the Roman Empire occur, and it’s all somewhat dreamlike. I enjoyed these aspects of the book, but I feel like I missed some type of wow factor from it or what it was really trying to say.

Rating: 3.5 stars


This is a speculative novel based on Ovid's (referred to as Naso) banishment from Rome to Tomis (present day Timiş, Romania) on the Black Sea. The book depicts the search that might have been made by Ovid's friend Cotta to locate Ovid. The story is supposed to parallel Ovid's Metamorphoses (which I have yet to read).

While some events really did take place, most of what happened to Ovid during this time period is unknown. Ransmayr took a lot of creative license when re-creating the last decade of Ovid's life. The book also has surreal imagery and insertion of some more modern technlogy that did ot exist during Ovid's time.

I had recently read Ovid’s Metamorphoses which helped with working out the differences and similarities between this world’s characters and Ovid’s original characters. The theme of being an outcast from the glamour of Rome or of any city where the best of civilization continued to exist was interesting as it paralleled some of the disintegration I am seeing in our own world. The concept of constant change and yet a slight sliding toward stone where little change is visible was also interesting, as was the fact that the timeframe included buses and projectors but might as well have been an ancient world. The overall tone was of sadness and loss. The lover’s never find love, the mother’s lose their sons, the poet’s words and voices are eaten away by time even though his stories continue to influence the characters in the last world. Very interesting use of fantasy but there was so little plot or character development that it was a slow engagement. I gave it three stars.