Review: You might think a history of tax havens would be dull but 'The Hidden Globe' is 'luminous'

French economist Thomas Piketty has long argued that the richest figures and their heirs will only grow exponentially wealthier in the coming decades, concealing fortunes in offshore tax havens and influencing politicians to keep government tentacles away from their yachts, private jets and Mediterranean estates.

In her stellar work of literary journalism, "The Hidden Globe," Atossa Araxia Abrahamian peels back murky history and legalese to expose the machinations of these enclaves, how they thrive beyond the reach of laws, sovereign unto themselves. Come for Switzerland, stay for Singapore — the sun never sets on this grift.

Abrahamian was raised in Geneva; throughout her childhood and adolescence she'd observed the city's enigmatic quality, an otherness amid its plethora of consulates and international agencies, diplomats and their families. Geneva, she recounts, was a prototype for free zones tucked like pockets in the hem of a ballgown — banks, warehouses, offices in bland commercial parks — where billionaires stored euros and dollars, antiques and Picasso canvases, appreciating in value off the grid.

Tax havens sprang up from Singapore to Dubai to the Caribbean, midwifed by management consultancies such as Arthur D. Little (ADL) and its descendants, McKinsey and Deloitte.

"For at least a century, intermediaries like Deloitte have helped countries divert their lawmaking and governing capabilities — the power to regulate industry, naturalize citizens, and protect their borders — to benefit private interests," Abrahamian writes. "This is how the hidden globe gets made: piece by piece, hole by hole."

Escaped from their bottles, the genies of deregulation have carved out a shadowy realm where democracy itself need not apply. Indeed, nation-states have little sway; technology has eroded the notion of borders. Abrahamian points an accusing finger at many countries, but none is quite as complicit as the United States, where spoils go to the victor. Commonweal, moral integrity, even basic fairness: all grovel beneath the boot of manic greed.

"The Hidden Globe" could easily have been a litany of malfeasance and wonky woes, and still contributed to debates surrounding equity and the future. Abrahamian's artistic touch imbues the dry bits with shine and movement. She peoples her narrative with the famous and infamous, cameos from Mary Shelley and Che Guevara to Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg's former deputy prime minister, who acquired a "posh British accent" at university in the UK.

As Abrahamian notes, Schneider is "a product of European socialist political parties. But he will willingly play handmaiden to global capitalist interests should the right opportunity arise. ... In his spare time, he collects vintage cars, tends to his garden, and on occasion posts selfies with his handsome younger husband on Instagram."

To what end? Abrahamian suggests that elites' high-altitude cruise to enormous wealth and power is pathological, shrouded among the recesses of the human mind, beyond conscious reasoning. Back on Earth, the rest of us peck at ever-dwindling crumbs, much like pigeons on a Manhattan sidewalk.

It's on us to change course, but it may already be too late. A season of unrest looms ahead, and "The Hidden Globe" lays out the unvarnished truth in a luminous feat of reportage.

Hamilton Cain, who also reviews for the New York Times and Washington Post, lives in Brooklyn.

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

By: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian.

Publisher: Riverhead, 336 pages, $30.