Escape from Babylon
Chris Woolgrove
eBook
(Berge Publishing, Dec. 23, 2013)
What did it feel like to live in and serve Nazi Germany then be torn away from everything you knew only to be finally dumped back into the new world of Communist East Germany? Or was it new? Through the turbulent times of Franz Schmidt, feel how terror and disillusionment morphs into Boa constrictor, Gestapo into Stasi, trust into deceit. Only one constant theme gives him hope. “Escape from Babylon is an astonishingly well written first novel. A cross between Jeffrey Archer and Ian McEwan, it is an emotional roller coaster set against the uncertainties of post-war Europe. The main characters are sympathetic, and the baddies horrible.” Sarah Challis 11 time best-selling novelist "I am from former East Germany and live in Canada. This book is fantastic...it's our past and the story feels so real. Loved to read it!" Gabrielle Pahnke, Kindle purchaser.Why did I write Escape from Babylon?I am English but have lived in East Germany for 17 years. Here I have met and listened to many WW2 veterans as well as practically every day hearing something from my acquaintances, friends and family about life in the DDR. It struck me that these WW2 and DDR generations are getting older and starting to die and as they do so their stories, memories and emotions of their times will die with them. Soon it will all only be cold facts in a history book. What a terrible shame. I decided that these emotions, the feelings of the ordinary people who were subjected to these systems should not be lost with them. That others should understand what it was like should be recorded and could best be told, not as a history book, but as a novel. A novel that is naturally full of accurate facts but a novel that gives the reader the knowledge and the pleasure of that knowledge in knowing the attitudes, social and physical constraints, hopes and fears of these real life generations before they disappear. So I wrote Escape from Babylon! Best wishesChris
