Fables & Lies: A WWII Novel Based on a True Story
After Germany invades Poland and Britain declares war, Berlin-based early and pre-history museum assistant Freyja Bremer starts categorizing and packing up priceless artifacts to protect them from air raids. As she works alongside a Cambridge-educated archaeologist, she begins to question what she has been taught about Aryan heritage. Pushed into marriage with an SS officer charged with usurping artifacts from occupied cities, she learns about plans to replace native populations with pure-blood Aryans.
Fables & Lies delves into aspects of Aryanism unknown at least to this reader, including efforts to resurrect prehistorical plant species through selective breeding, perpetuate myths associated with Nordic dominance throughout early history, and prove that contrary theories were based on forged findings. Descriptions of Berlin in the 1940s are finely tuned, and attitudes about Nazism among ordinary Germans are sharply contrasted. But while Freyja is surrounded by conflicts among family members, abused by her husband, and challenged about her core understanding of history, science, and beliefs, there is little sense of her emotional turmoil. Freyja witnesses the fables and the lies but is not deeply moved by them, diminishing the power of the narrative and the shocking realities of Aryan philosophy.
