Just finished my exam on this yesterday, but had read it 4 months ago. XD And it was amazing, I was floored by the brilliance of this work. Also, thank God for classroom discussions. XD

The novel tells the fictional story of the great Latin poet Ovid through his voice, so it's essentially an autobiography, but written by another author, centuries later, inventing fiction upon the life of a historical character, yes, the premise is amazing!

It traces Ovid's life after his exile from Rome and delves into philosophy of language, identity and transformation and is actually complex to deal with, but the writing is so beautiful and poetic it captures your senses. Being a work of literary fiction, it raises obvious literary political questions but even for the general reader picking this up, I think it'd still make a fantastic read as it dabbles with fact, fiction, imagination and fantasy.

Overall, just read this!! I promise you're not going to regret it, and it's a slim novel.

أخيرا خلصتها .. رواية و لا ليها اي تلاتين لازمة ...اعتقد انها رواية فلسفية اكثر منها رواية ادبية ..اهو وقعت من نصيبي و خلصتها .. افتكر نجمة واحدة كفاية عليها

نجمة واحدة وكثير عليها
الترجمة سيئة سيئة سيئة
لم استطع قراءة أكثر من 50 صفحة !
لا انصح بها بتاتا !
( المترجم هنا هو سعدي يوسف)
#رأي شخصي :)

I read this book at uni. I loved it. The amazing tale of the exiled Ovid. Highly recommended.

Until nearly halfway through the book - which reads neither like a short story nor truly a novel, but almost an intellectual experiment with elements of both - An Imaginary Life feels contrived and rather annoying.

Malouf introduces us to the poet Ovid, exiled from Rome to a rustic community at the edge of the empire, somewhere near the Black Sea. Its inhabitants are superstitious and, to Ovid's eyes, primitive. Ovid himself, old, cultured and unsuited to this life, is a fish out of water. And essentially nothing happens except that Ovid catches sight of a feral child.

With a bit more discipline this might have worked fairly well. But Malouf wanders through the community's customs and Ovid's thoughts in a way that feels palpably like a writer making things up on the fly. It doesn't connect properly with the reader, with a shimmer of artificiality that brought to mind Waiting for the Barbarians; except that in that work the vibe of the unreal was the whole point, whereas here it feels the opposite of what was intended. Told in what is effectively a continuous inner monologue on Ovid's part with dream sequences that do not ring true, it is awkward and dull.

And then the child arrives on the scene, we suddenly have a rather charming plot of raising him and the question of whether it is Ovid, with all his culture, civilising the child, or the child opening Ovid's eyes to what has always mattered and he has never even perceived, and it's all quite enchanting and beautifully written.

So I'm really not sure what to say about this one. It's almost exactly divided into one half self-indulgence on the writer's part that drags and isn't rewarding and one half moving tale of enlightenment that doesn't and is.

What a gorg take on Ovid's exile

I don't think I can rate this book, it is more of an experience than a conventionally plotted or written novel; at times, I found it hard to follow exactly what was going on, but the ending was very satisfying in terms of being consistent with the spirit of the book (I have otherwise sometimes found Malouf's books had trouble quite living up to their early promise) and I think I will probably re-read it again in a year or two in order to keep trying to understand it more fully. I also really liked Malouf's very brief afterword in which he explained what he was trying to accomplish with this book. I know some people don't like that kind of thing but I felt that it worked for this type of story; I didn't feel that I was being told what to think about the book, just that I was getting a little extra nugget of understanding about it and that I could choose to make what I wanted to do of it.

حسناً لقد قيمتها بنجمتين فقط عند أول قراءة
أكان على الكهرباء أن تنقطع ويوخزني وجع القراءة بما يكفي لأُحضر كشافاً كهربائياً , لأُعيد قراءة كتاب لم أحببه كثيراً
! لأكتشف أنني ظلمته
لقد أثبت هذا لي أن للكتب أرواح كما أرواحنا والا ما الذي يجعل كتاباً سيئاً في قراءة أكثر جودة في قراءة ثانية لم تتجاوز الفترة بينهما الشهر
ان للكتب قابلية للعطاء ايضاً , ويحدد هذا العطاء مزاجية الورق او القارىء
هذا يفسر الأعداد الهائلة لأشخاص كرهوا روايات عالمية ولم يستسيغوا بعض الأشعار الجميلة
الكتب لا تكشف انفسها الا في اللحظة المناسبة او التي تعجبها
أو لبعض الأشخاص المعينين
ان ما كتبته حالياً يضعني في خانه يُحرم علي منهاانتقاد ذائقة اي كان الأدبية .
وربما يضع انتقاداتي الأدبية " على صغر قيمتها " انتقادات مشكوك بصحتها ويتم تصنيفي كشخص لم تتكشف له الرواية بعد , أو ربما تكشفت أكثر من اللازم
على أي حال فان قراءاتي جميعها انما تأت في المقام الأول لذاك الشعور بالانتماء والامتلاء و الخدر اللذيذ
ولست أهتم ذلك الاهتمام بآراء الأشخاص في الكتب التي أحببتها أو التي لم أفعل
ولا أكترث حقاً ان احببت كتاباً وجده الآخرون سخيفاً , أو حتى ان كرهت رواية ما
وعلى " عاطفية " هذا الرأي , اني أُقدر كل من ينقدون الكتب من الناحية اللغوية أو البناء أو طريقة السرد .
ونعم أتمنى أن أمتلك هذه المعرفة يوماً ما , انما حالياً سأستمر بطريقتي " العاطفية " على بساطتها في تحديد الكتب التي أُحب , مع ابراز ما وجدته فيها من انتقادات كتلك .
بالنسبة لتقييم هذا الكتاب فان هذه الصورة هي الوحيدة التي وافقت مزاجي بعد قراءته
*ملاحظة : هذا الرأي لا يشتمل الكُتب العلمية أو ذات الطابع السياسي مثلاً , فهذه من الواضح أن الحُكم عليها يأتي بمنهج العقل وفكره لا لهجة العاطفة , تجنباً للمصائب مستقبلاً

"Winter here is a time of slow-smoldering resentments, of suspicion, or fantasies that grow as the days move deeper into the year's darkness and the cold drives us closer together and yet further apart."

I found the text to be brilliantly abstract and theoretical, and written in poetic language so creatively plucked from the author’s mind and the conceived life of Ovid. It is a short read, and I flew through each page at record speed. It leaves no wanting nor confusion, though one would imagine it would. I thoroughly enjoyed it and plan to read more of David Malouf’s work.

I was struck by the context of the Roman poet in a strange environment, and found it stranger that some of the context was not so out of place. The book is simple, in language and expression. I can see all of it so plainly, it made me egress from lethargy and laziness.

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