Then again - Irma Kurtz

In 1954 18-year-old Irma Kurtz left New Jersey to travel across Europe, intent on transforming herself and changing the world. On her post-war Grand Tour she found what she believed in: art, culture, beauty and love, and some horror as a Jewish girl encountering the seat of much of her family's destruction. In the year 2000, sifting through a cardboard box of memories, she rediscovered the journal of her first journey, which marked the beginning of a life of writing and living abroad. Gripped by intense recollections of her adventurous younger self, she left London and retraced her footsteps, this time with herself as a guide.;Kurtz vividly captures the cities of love and romance with the wit and compassion that have won her so many fans. Testing her theory that older women are invisible, her journey is peppered with acute observations of human behaviour, not to mention some sharp advice for her travel companion, a teenager who thinks she knows it all, yet has no clue what lies ahead of her. The dialogue between the two women offers an insight into what has endured, and what has been lost, in the altered environment of Europe at the dawn of a new millennium. Moving and funny, "Then Again" is part memoir, part travelogue and reveals the pains and pleasures of growing older and wiser.