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Original publication date

Epigraph In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river...



This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

--T.S. Eliot

Dedication

First words Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy woke soon after dawn.

Quotations "I couldn't bear to - to just stop doing things and do nothing. You might as well die now and get it over." ... "I'd like to do things right, up to the end." As time passed, the radioactivity would pass also ... these streets and houses would be habitable again ... The human race was to be wiped out and the world made clean again for wiser occupants."

Last words Then she put the tablets in her mouth and swallowed them down with a mouthful of brandy, sitting behind the wheel of her big car. (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Original language English