His ninetieth year just behind him, former psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor George Szego reflects on the mysteries of grief, loss and desire.
edquo;Sentenced to lifeidquo; by the Nazis at the age of sixteen, Auschwitz dash;Birkenau survivor George would go on to marry his childhood sweetheart, a fellow Hungarian Jew and eventually a fellow doctor; see cancer take the love of his life some seventy years later; then finally re-partner, in his eighties, with all the innocence and wonderment of a teenager. With the clock ticking, Szego is haunted by the horrors of his past; is repeatedly recharged by the gifts of the present; and is, all the while, philosophical about life squo;s apparent contradictions and the inexorable march of time.
Part social autobiography, part deconstruction of accepted attitudes to ageing, part romantic memoir, this powerful book is both heartrending and heart-warming.
