In Ravelstein, Saul Bellow’s last novel, published in 2000 when he was 85 years old, his recurrent topic of coming to terms with death is presented with more immediacy than in earlier novels. The title character, Ravelstein, a political philosopher, is actually a dying man, and the narrator, Chick, frequently contemplates his friend’s imminent passing. Bellow described his 1976 novel Humboldt’s Gift as a book attempting to make a comedy of death, and comedy and death are similarly juxtaposed in Ravelstein. However, the optimism and humour of the earlier novel are less obvious in the contemplations of Chick and Ravelstein on human mortality. Their pronouncements can to some extent be linked to the framework of the Kübler-Ross theory of emotional responses to dying, but also exude complexity and individuality. The novel focuses on the way in which Ravelstein, who has AIDS and other complications, conducts himself during the last months of his life, and the nature of his social and intellectual preoccupations as he muses on philosophy and the Holocaust, revisiting the Jewish angle which is one aspect of earlier works. Chick has his own near-death experience later in the novel which provides another perspective on confronting mortality. Reflecting constantly on impending death, Chick concludes that man is not ready to accept death as an ending but believes in some kind of continuance, and thinks that even Ravelstein, despite his avowed belief to the contrary, may have felt the same. Whether this is a genuine spiritual belief or simply a coping strategy is left to the reader to decide, but Chick’s recollections of Ravelstein when alive create a positive note in the novel’s final pages.