AT THE END OF her latest, and final, book which she has elusively entitled Trieste And The Meaning Of Nowhere (Simon & Schuster, $179), Jan Morris has written a short epilogue. Its subheading is Across My Grave and its tone, like that of much of the book, is elegiac - a mixture of yearning and regret. 'For years I felt myself an exile from normality, and now I feel myself one of those exiles from time,' she writes, adding, a few sentences later, 'The books I have written are no more than smudged graffiti on a wall, and I shall write no more of them.'
If that sounds cheerless - and it is impossible to read this final section without being moved - then Morris is determined to keep the pathos in check, at least in public. The week before last, she addressed the Royal Geographical Society in Hong Kong (rgshk.org.hk) with verve and somewhat arch humour. 'Get out your handkerchiefs,' she announced from the podium, waving one she'd pinched earlier from her hotel. 'It's a sombre subject, last books.'
For Morris, however, there seems to be a sense of relief that Trieste And The Meaning Of Nowhere will bring a halt to the international kerfuffle that is present-day book-publishing - the book tour, the reviews, the interviews. 'I've publicised this book more than any I've ever done,' she says, the following day in her hotel suite, while wearing a T-shirt that announces 'So many books . . . so little time'. 'I'm not keen on book tours but this book I want to be known. I want this to go out with a bang.'
Perhaps flogging it so comprehensively is an insurance policy that she won't go back on her word and do another. 'You have a point,' says Morris, with a smile. 'There can be no sequel.'
Those who fancy a trip to Trieste in Italy will discover that Morris' work is not what you might expect. It is a meditation, not a travel book; Morris dislikes being called a travel writer, not from any snobbery about travel writing but from old-fashioned intellectual honesty.
She has always written subjectively - usually about cities, such as Venice, Oxford, Sydney and, of course, Hong Kong - and is not the sort of scribbler who loiters in flea-ridden guest-houses in search of native colour. As she puts it: 'I've hardly ever stepped on a local bus with goats.'