Brigitte Goldstein’s Babylon Laid Waste – A Journey in the Twilight of the Idols is a Spellbinding Historical Saga that Captures the Aftermath of War in Post WWII Germany

With the help of a people-smuggling ring, Artemisia breaches the fortress with forged papers under an assumed name. As her journey takes her ever deeper into the devastated enemy territory, she encounters an array of colorful, frequently shady characters ranging from victorious Americans, unrepentant Nazis, ordinary civilians, Jewish camp survivors, and washed-up Wagnerian opera stars. Each has an intriguing personal story and a private agenda to pursue.

She eventually runs afoul of the US military authorities and Major Emil Zweig, a zealous Nazi hunter. Since she lacks the crucial “Schein”—a denazification certificate—he sends her to a prison for female Nazi criminals. At this nadir of her ill-starred journey, a savior appears in the person of Frantiçek Kafka, an enigmatic Jewish survivor. Impelled by the romantic attraction sprouting between them, Artemisia joins him in his search for a pair of Nazi opera singers who had gone into hiding. In the ensuing rollercoaster ride of unforeseen twists and turns, she becomes a major player in a drama in which nothing is what appearances suggest or anyone pretends reality to be.

What inspired you to write Babylon Laid Waste – A Journey in the Twilight of the Idols?

Artemisia Safran is the narrator and a central figure in my previous novel, Death of a Diva-From Berlin to Broadway. She is a young German Jewish refugee who becomes involved in the murder investigation of a renowned Jewish actress who was once the darling of Weimar Germany’s stage and cinema and was, now in exile, an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime.

I asked myself what would happen if Artemisia returned to the defeated Reich in the immediate aftermath of the war and defeat. The ideas for Babylon unrolled from there.

How did your background and experience influence your writing?

I have been a lifelong student of history with a view to learning not only about “dates and battles” but about human behavior under circumstances that are mostly beyond their control. Historical fiction writing allows me to bring a particular historical period or event to life through the experiences, conflicts, and struggles of my characters. In the writing of Babylon, my extensive knowledge of modern German and Jewish history enabled me to create an authentic tableau against which the human drama unfolds. My knowledge of German culture and the language also came in handy. In addition, my familiarity with mentality was an important sculpting tool in fashioning believable characters, some engaging and some repugnant, and their backstories..

What is one message you would like readers to remember?

Like all fiction, historical fiction aims to entertain, to weave a suspenseful story that draws the reader along on the characters’ breath-taking journey toward the attainment of an all-consuming goal, their holy grail.

Historical fiction permits the writer, and the reader, to let the imagination take flight into the past free of the encumbrance procrustean restraints place on academic history.