When Christoph Ransmayr's novel 'The Last World' was published in 1988, it was celebrated by critics like few others - for its poetic, rhythmic language, its stylistic elegance, and its powerful dream and nightmare imagery. It has been translated into 29 languages so far. In this novel, the banishment of the Roman poet Ovid by Emperor Augustus in 8 AD serves as the historically fixed starting point for an imaginative fiction. The Roman Cotta, Ovid's historically documented friend through Ovid's 'Letters from Exile,' embarks on a journey in Tomi by the Black Sea: in search of the banished poet, as rumors of his death circulate in Rome, and also in search of a copy of the 'Metamorphoses,' Ovid's legendary main work. However, in the "iron gray city" of Tomi, Cotta only encounters traces of his friend; he does not meet Ovid himself.