Scholten, a Dutch writer, married the daughter of a Hungarian aristocratic refugee, and in the 1990s, as the iron curtain lifted, became fascinated by the stories told by the family about their former properties and lives. When the opportunity presented itself to move the family to Hungary because of his wife's job opening a branch of a Dutch bank, he started seeking out surviving remnants of the old Hungarian and Romanian (Transylvanian, particularly) elite. My like Douglas Smith's Former People, about the crushing of the Russian aristocracy in the years after 1917, this is a chronicle of brutal expropriation and suppression, with few survivors and even fewer who managed to hang on to photos, jewels and land. These memories are mixed in with the attempts, up to the present, to sort out land possession and restore some of the castles (although now expensive white elephants) to their former owners.