Lisa Barr’s ‘The Goddess of Warsaw’ is a ‘Vengeful’ Reflection on History, Identity, and Redemption
- Like “The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell,” this novel explores the lifelong arc of trauma and the loneliness of being singled out for being different.
Lisa Barr’s “The Goddess of Warsaw” is a haunting, dramatic story of war, resistance, love, and reinvention. With the sensual urgency and emotional depth familiar to readers of The “Unbreakables” and “Woman on Fire,” Barr goes further into the shadows of World War II, illuminating one woman’s miraculous transformation—from victim to survivor, from spy to star, from haunted soul to an avenger cloaked in satin.
Like all of Barr’s heroines, Bina Blonski refuses to be a bystander in her own life. She’s striking—blue-eyed, blonde, and multilingual—vibrant, defiant, and unapologetically sensual. When we first meet her in 1943, she’s trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto with her husband Jakub and his brother Aleksander. Starvation, terror, and death define her days—medicine and bread traded for dignity, children dragged into the streets, and into a fate worse than hell. Horror upon unimagined horror. One life traded for a rare Stradviski violin. Many innocent lives are vanquished. And yet, Bina’s will is made of steel. She claims the hidden passport and escapes the ghetto. She is determined to live!
With her Aryan features and classical acting training, she becomes a spy for the Jewish resistance, slipping between identities with elegance, courage, and cunning. Her metamorphosis begins not just with changing her name—but with stepping into the fire of her convictions and re-emerging as someone altogether new. She uses people in her circle, her brother-in-law, her friend Stach, who steals the show as Mercutio in their school dramas, and who is also unknowingly her half-brother.
That new woman is Lena Browning, a luminous post-war Hollywood icon. The last name she adopts is not just a nod to glamour, but to the firearm she’s not afraid to use. Yet beneath the movies and spotlight, Lena is haunted by ghosts: lovers lost, lives betrayed, justice denied. Unlike Woman on Fire’s protagonist, who investigates art theft and family secrets, Lena’s mission is visceral. She’s hunting the architects of genocide.
Past and Present
The third act, set in 2005, introduces Sienna Hayes, a young filmmaker determined to tell Lena’s story. This is where the novel’s emotional core truly deepens. Through Lena’s reluctant narration, we witness her reckoning—with pain, betrayal, and the enduring cost of survival.
If you’ve read Woman on Fire, you’ll recognize Barr’s signature: dual timelines, strong women pushing against the boundaries of their era, and prose that narrates like a three-act play. Emotional, descriptive, and unapologetically dramatic. But here, Barr sharpens her lens on the Holocaust, placing a Jewish woman at the center of one of history’s most brutal uprisings—the Warsaw Ghetto. She doesn’t just show us the horror; she gives her heroine power, sexuality, and stunning moral complexity.
Literary Comparisons
There are echoes here of other World War II books “Life is Beautiful” and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” in how love and innocence stubbornly persist in the face of brutality. But Barr’s narrative is more adult, more sensual, more morally layered. Bina is no saint. She seduces to survive. She betrays to protect. She loves two brothers: one who dies, one who lives—and never fully forgives herself for either.
Like “The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell,” this novel explores the lifelong arc of trauma and the loneliness of being singled out for being different. But where Sam Hell is quiet, reflective, and contemplative, “The Goddess of Warsaw” is bold, dramatic, and vengeful. I listened to it on audible. Jane Oppenheimer’s narration was quite compelling.
With one foot in Huntsville, Alabama, the other in her birth home, India, and a heart steeped in humanity, Monita Soni writes as a contemplative practice. She has published hundreds of poems, movie reviews, book critiques, and essays, and contributed to combined literary works. Her two books are My Light Reflections and Flow Through My Heart. You can hear her commentaries on Sundial Writers Corner, WLRH 89.3 FM.
