In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the French writer and politician Maurice Barrès emerged as the "Master" of nationalism, the ideological movement that defined itself as the acceptance of the determinism of land and the dead, which glorified war and fought against internationalism and universal values. Ion Dragoumis was the most important Greek "student" of his. However, around Barrès we find hundreds of other cosmopolitan nationalists from around the world: Italians - such as D'Annunzio and Marinetti -, Spaniards, Portuguese, Latin Americans, Balkans... Through their correspondence and various other sources, nationalism emerges as an international phenomenon, the creation of a network of ambitious elitist intellectuals who sought to combine a radically reactionary political ideology with literature and art.

The book traces the international routes of Barrèsian nationalism, from Paris to Peru or the Ottoman "East", its contradictions, its branches and mutations, its relationship with war and the emergence of fascism; in order to finally focus on its Greek versions, on the ideological trajectory of Ion Dragoumis, from his conversion to his rupture, and on the significance it had for descendants such as Nikos Kazantzakis and the writers of the "Generation of the '30s".