The end of the world in the world

"The book I'm looking for," says the blurred figure, who holds out a volume similar to yours, "is the one that gives the sense of the world after the end of the world, the sense that the world is the end of everything that there is in the world, that the only thing there is in the world is the end of the world."

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller (Vintage Books, 1998) p. 243