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“This is a classic in the lines of Patrick Leigh-Fermor” Norman Stone, professor of modern history, Oxford
“Unique, deeply moving and unmissable”
William Blacker, Literary Review
“Thought-provoking”
David Pryce Jones, The New Criterion
“Inquisitive”
George Gömöri, Times Literary Supplement
“Engrossing”
Petroc Trelawny, BBC
“Masterly”
Richard Bassett, Country Life
“An extraordinary, passionate and important work”
Libris History Prize Jury
[/txt][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][txt]“Jaap Scholten’s masterly Comrade Baron charts brilliantly the appalling injustices meted out to the families who were on the receiving end of the ‘class war’ Communist Romania inflicted on the old aristocracy of the Carpathians. He goes much further than most writers, however, in acutely examining the legacy of those dreadful events and their impact on the mentality of the contemporarygeneration.” Richard Bassett, Country Life
“Combining a warm heart with the tenacious pursuit of truth, Jaap Scholten restores to vivid life the world of the Transylvanian aristocracy from its glory days to its tragic finale. Scholten thereby captures a missing piece of history and provides the reader with a griping journey through a lost world.” Kati Marton, author and award-winning former ABC News correspondent
“The personal stories of the victims are fascinating, as is Scholten’s own journey to discover how it all happened. He hunts about in the rubble of medieval castles, wanders the passages of political prisons and learns about the tortures used in them and the bizarre reasons why some inmates were there. The immediacy of Scholten’s tale and the accounts of the survivors, combined with a wonderful eye for the surreal details of the totalitarian and post-totalitarian societies through which he travels on his quest, make this a unique, deeply moving and unmissable book.” William Blacker, Literary Review
“Part of the book reads like a fairy tale about Transylvania before the First World War, a land of idyllic castles and tame bears who suffer the whims of tiny children.” George Gömöri, Times Literary Supplement
“Comrade Baron is a highly personalized defense of aristocracy. These days, that’s the sort of thing that simply isn’t done and this singular book therefore runs the risk of being overlooked…
That would be a shame. Comrade Baron is thought-provoking and a pleasure to read.” David Pryce-Jones, The New Criterion
“I have enjoyed this book so much – such a great tale, with brilliant original research and source material, and so many stories, tragic, humiliating, painful, yet all engrossing and highly readable.” Petroc Trelawny, BBC[/txt][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][txt]”My childhood was full of whispered stories about the disappeared Transylvanian aristocracy, each time we drank tea, my father would mention how he learnt to do it the proper way from Auguszta Kemény. As far as I knew the lady selling flowers and popcorn on Bolyai street was a countess in disguise hiding from the communists. Jaap Scholten set out to gather these stories in the last possible moment, his book is both a personal adventure and thrilling investigation aiming to save a vanishing cache of oral history. Comrade Baron is one of those rare books which instantly makes you understand a complicated historical period written in such an immersive way that you instantly feel you are part of the story too.” Győrgy Dragomán, author of The White King
“Comrade Baron is a lyrical book in which the author unashamedly professes his love of the Transylvanian landscape and his admiration for the indomitability of the Transylvanian nobility in the communist period. It is humorous, too, with its descriptions of the Eastern European nouveaux riches and their new forms of old-fashioned snobbery. But this book is more than a declaration of love. It presents an extraordinary oral history in which the last remaining members of the aristocracy tell how Ceaușescu carried out an ex-termination programme against the class enemy, making it an urgent testimony about an aspect of recent history as horrifying as it is unknown. After the fall of the Wall, Western and Eastern Europe are still trying to work out their relationship with each other. This fascinating book contributes to that effort.” Extract from the jury re-
port of the Libris History Prize 2011
“There are many wonderful things about Scholten’s book. In his introduction he writes that he wants to record the stories of a dissappearing world, particulary those concerning the Transylvanian aristocracy, but he also captures the spirit of Old Europa, the pride in the past, the assumptions, the ideals, the worldview, the sense of superiority. Scholten’s book is rich, colourful, occasionally gruesome, often astonishing and beautifully written. By beautiful I mean: fast-paced, with passion and a good feeling for detail.” Het Parool[/txt][/vc_column][/vc_row]