The time: the summer of 1913. The place: House Onderkuhle, an exclusive boarding school for the sons of the aristocracy in eastern Belgium. The old order may be crumbling but at Onderkuhle training for a life of command goes unchallenged. The most important lessons: fencing, riding and, above all, the forms of etiquette - 'the refinements of aristocratic intercourse'. Boëtius von Orlamünde distinguishes himself at all of these. He subdues his doubts by undertaking ever more extreme physical tests, climaxing in the breaking-in of the stallion Cyrus. On the night the school burns down, Boëtius displays cowardice and forfeits his nobility.

Immediately recognised as a masterpiece on its first publication in 1928, The Aristocrat dissects the collapse of a world of rigid hierarchy and exposes the murderous perversity of those who persist in living by the old rules.