Odysseus, Criminal.

In timeless images, Christoph Ransmayr tells the tale of Odysseus’ homecoming as the story of a man forever scarred by war, who cannot stay in his homeland either in the end.

Odysseus returns home from the Trojan war, shipwrecked after years of detours ruled by greed, lust and ambition, and no longer recognises his land: Ithaca seems to have declined into chaos during its years without a ruler. The returning king, having forsworn arms, intends to restore the old order as a prophet of peace. Caught in the gulf between his desires and reality, he becomes a slaughterer again.
Christoph Ransmayr’s play about the endlessness and the omnipresence of war, which also leaves permanent scars on those victims who survive it, is premiered by Schauspiel Dortmund as part of the European Capital of Culture ‘Ruhr 2010’.

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  • Publisher: S. FISCHER
  • Release: 23.02.2010
  • ISBN: 978-3-10-062945-6
  • 120 Pages
  • Author: Christoph Ransmayr
Buchcover von Odysseus, Criminal.: Schauspiel einer Heimkehr
Christoph RansmayrOdysseus, Criminal.
Portrait von Christoph Ransmayr
© Robert Brembeck
Christoph Ransmayr

Christoph Ransmayr  was born in 1954 in Wels/Upper Austria and now lives again in Vienna after years in Ireland and traveling. Alongside popular and internationally acclaimed novels such as  The Terrors of Ice and Darkness ,  The Last World ,  Morbus Kitahara ,  The Flying Mountain ,  Cox or The Course of Time ,  The Lockmaster. A Short Story of Killing  and the  Atlas of an Anxious Man  he publishes experiments with narrative forms, like  Under a Sky of Sugar. Ballads and Poems which has recently been sold to Seagull Books. Among other literary awards, he has received the Friedrich Hölderlin, the Franz Kafka, and the Bert Brecht prizes, the Kleist Prize, the Premio Mondello, and, together with Salman Rushdie, the European Union's Prix Aristeion, as well as the Prix du meilleur livre étranger and the Prix Jean Monnet de Littérature Européenne.