Dying: A Memoir by Donald Horne & Myfanwy Horne

I am constantly thinking about the way my life is ending, but the idea of being dead has not worried me since I abandoned religion in high school, and my nearness to death has not produced a belief in the supernatural.

This unique book is the last work of one of Australia's most respected and influential thinkers. On learning that his illness was terminal, Donald Horne began dictating his experience of dying, and his resulting journal is full of courage, honesty, insight and humour. Ever the intellectual, he also recorded his last thoughts on some of the big human questions: faith and regret, the uses of art, the rewards of the engaged mind. And on contemporary dilemmas such as the Iraq War, anti-Americanism and the meaning of democracy. These essays have been refined by his wife and long-time editor, Myfanwy, who has also written her own inspirational account of Donald's final weeks.

Far from being morbid, Dying is a book that sings with life. Donald Horne's memories of his well-lived years sit alongside his unflinching view of their end, and the whole is uplifted by his willingless to laugh at human foibles, his own included.