The dying Freud hustled out of Vienna into exile A Broadway musical on the subject of Trotsky in New York The last throes of the planet Earth in AD 2000 These are all items on The End of the World News Psychoanalysis, international socialism and The End - three themes, three stories - outrageously counterpointed into trinity, in a novel stuffed with verbal pyrotechnics, amazing sleights of fantasy, and tantalizing jokes, and which is crowned by a brilliant, unexpected, out-of-this-world finale - all written by one novelist at the height of his powers.