By C. S. Richardson
(Reviewed by Nancy Jelinek)

When Ambrose Zephyr was a young boy, he had a fascination with travel brochures and the alphabet. He wrote letters to every “embassy, mission, and consulate in London,” asking for any information they had available for visitors to their country. When he received a response, he noted the site with a pin on a map and stored the information in a suitcase. He practiced his A’s and Z’s for a perfect signature to his correspondence, along with every letter in between, often illustrating them.

Ambrose, now the 50-year-old “creative wallah” for an advertising firm in London, has been diagnosed with an untreatable medical condition and given a month to live. His wife, Zappora Ashkenazi, known as Zipper, is a literary editor for a fashion magazine. At first, they are in denial. Then Ambrose begins to formulate a plan and digs out his ancient suitcase of travel brochures. Having never traveled as much as he’d hoped as a child, he maps out month-long trip to destinations beginning with A to Z. Zipper, wanting to be as supportive as possible, agrees, and their adventure begins.

They begin with lunch in Amsterdam, then move on to Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate. Each short chapter takes them to another place, moving them even closer together, yet further apart, as Ambrose begins to tire more easily and feel unwell because of his condition. Zipper finds something to collect—a journal, a small stone, a postcard—in each place.

Sad, of course, but humorous and loving, this is a story of being faced with an age-old question: What would you do if you were told you had only a limited time to live?

The End of the Alphabet won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book.