The Goddess of Warsaw - Lisa Barr

Written by Lisa Barr
Read by Jane Oppenheimer
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperAudio
Release date: May 28, 2024
Duration: 13:03:58

Publishers Weekly—-Starred review from April 29, 2024
”In the moving latest from Barr (Women on Fire), a Jewish woman survives the Warsaw ghetto to become a Hollywood legend.

In 2005, young movie star Sienna Hayes, who wants to make a biopic of Lena’s life, approaches 85-year-old Lena Browning, known for her mid-century femme fatale roles. She agrees to cooperate under the condition that the last segment of the film will be shot in real time with Lena playing herself.

In a parallel narrative set in 1943, Lena, whose real name is Bina Blonski, lives in the ghetto with her husband, Jakub, and his brother, Aleksander. Once a celebrated actor and daughter of a prominent Jewish architect, Bina is now destitute and nearly starving, though that doesn’t stop her from joining Aleksander in his resistance activities. But when she uses her Aryan looks to charm and then assassinate the collaborator overseeing a ghetto sweatshop, the Nazis retaliate, sending Jakub to Treblinka.

Bina suffers more loses and betrayals in the run-up to the ghetto’s dramatic uprising, which is memorably staged by Barr. The depictions of ghetto residents finding the strength to fight back are chillingly realistic, raising the novel’s emotional stakes to excruciating heights.

A gripping page-turner of one of history’s most heroic uprisings and an actress whose personal war never ends, The Goddess Of Warsaw is filled with secrets, lies, twists and turns, and a burning pursuit of justice no matter the cost.

Fans of WWII historical fiction won’t want to miss this.”