His ninetieth year just behind him, former psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor George Szego reflects on the mysteries of grief, loss and desire.

"Sentenced to life" by the Nazis at the age of sixteen, Auschwitz-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'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.