Of All That Ends by Günter Grass

A slim but weighty final volume, Of All That Ends is a worthy addendum to the celebrated canon of Günter Grass, the sadly departed Nobel Prize winner for Literature. It's a book to dip in and out of, its poems and prose pieces rarely longer than a single page. "Early on I learned to find the gaps, avoid the scattered shot, though now and then I lost some feathers" he acknowledges in Open Season, an erudite and typically modest assessment of his position and his stature.

Gathered together here are the most sober of musings as the celebrated author of The Tin Drum considers the simple pleasures no longer available to him in later life (travel, taste) but reflects with relish on an altogether full life. The book's longest piece, How and Where We Will Be Laid to Rest, is a stirring meditation on mortality as Grass and his wife order matching coffins and try them for size. "So let another year or two pass. We're not in any hurry." In After Endless Torment, the artist's imperative remains: "up and out of bed, to clear with a sharp pencil, the flickering void."

There is little evidence of self-pity as Grass sees the end in sight: he either stares it down or simply laughs it off. Even as he approached 90, he retained his mordant wit. Indeed, it appears to have sustained him, as made evident by the book's closing piece: the poem that gives the book its title. "Done and dusted now. Nothing stirring now. Not even a fart now."