Introduction

''He was not trained for freedom, that was the problem, had not been brought up for it.''

At seventy-three, Herz is facing an increasingly bewildering world. He cannot see his place in it or even work out what to do with his final years. Questions and misunderstandings haunt Herz like old ghosts. Should he travel, sell his flat, or propose marriage to a friend he has not seen in thirty years? The letters he writes and does not send and the passers-by he encounters remind him how out of touch he is, how detached from the modern world. Yet Herz believes that he must do something, only he doesn''t know what this next big thing in life should be . . .