From aristocrats and the privileged circles of New York and Paris to military dictators and the political infighting, double-dealing and corruption or their regimes in Morocco and Haiti, welcome to the world where money and power reside. Through a series of encounters with its inhabitants, at once beguiling and grotesque, our investigative narrator uncovers bizarrre and disturbing stories of secret lovers, exiled princesses, religious heresies and murder. But as he becomes further enmeshed in this savage realm, his ambiguous status becomes increasingly unsettling: is he the impartial observer of priviliged foibles and fundamental inequity he appears to be? Or is he, perhaps, an embodiment of the dark diversions he chronicles...?