Auster, Paul - In the Country of Last Things

"In the Country of Last Things" is a book written by the American author Paul Auster and published in 1987.

Plot

Trama del romanzo

Anna Blume leaves for the last things in search of her brother William, a reporter who had been sent there to send reports on the desperate situation facing the land, but which has never brought a line. Everyone seems to want him to desist from his decision; the country is a place from which no one has ever returned, abandoned to himself by the indifference of the rest of the world, a sort of globe in itself that gradually goes hand in hand. Constantly subjected to government subversions and the disappearance of things that cease to exist suddenly both in reality and in the minds of the inhabitants, that place is the stage of a circumscribed apocalypse, in which all are in poverty and stagger between life and the death. In that land there does not seem to be rich, or rather, there are but they are never seen; relegate to an invisible paradise that seems impossible to find in a place like that, yet it must be there. As if well-being did not have the courage to show itself.

Condizioni disperate

In the country everything is gray, hopeless, and all the men who live there seem to live in the same misery, in the same desperate situation, barely managing to survive. Anna will soon find herself in the same condition: once the savings are exhausted she will find herself wandering the streets, looking for some junk to be sold in the middle of the abandoned garbage, like all the others.

Temi e messaggi

Like other works of the same genre, "In the Country of Last Things" tries to highlight the total lack of scruples that pervades human beings when they are immersed in misery, when even the smallest thing is needed to survive. In these conditions Anna represents the rebellion, the desperate search to bring a bit of foreign normality within that lost land; but it will be that land that consumes her slowly, along with almost all her hopes.