Longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker, and from the bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac 'This would soon be a new day, all too closely resembling the others, the normal days of his present existence, in which nothing happened nor could be expected to happen' 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 an old friend he has not seen in thirty years? Herz believes that he must do something, only he doesn't know what this next big thing in life should be . . .