Gregor von Rezzori's account of his childhood, recreating the world of Central Europe that vanished in 1938. It sheds a light on influences that have contributed to recent national turmoil. The book centres on the Bukovina - at one time an Austro-Hungarian province, then a part of Romania, and later absorbed into the Ukraine - and, in a series of portraits, describes the family and household that shaped his childhood. The author also wrote Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and The Death of My Brother Abel.