Babel

Abraham Babel looks out of the highest tower in the city at the people below, over whom he exercises great power. Babel’s granddaughter Alice, the only other survivor of a terrorist attack on the Babel family, is crippled and feels extremely lonely in her golden cage. She takes the mysterious Naomi on as a companion and tries, despite their differences in rank and power, to build a friendship with her. Her grandfather has complete faith in his new advisor, Lichtenstern, but Lichtenstern has a strange effect on Babel. Naomi also turns out not to be the person Alice thought she was. Who can you trust in a world where the law of the strongest prevails?

Babel is an exciting, profound novel, in which Jan De Leeuw again shows that his great strength lies in creating complex, thoroughly credible characters. In this flawlessly constructed story the puzzle is slowly laid out and no one turns out to be what they seem. Good and evil emerge as empty concepts when revenge is the overarching theme. The threat comes from all sides and no one is spared. Apparently effortlessly De Leeuw embeds the human struggle of his characters in a web of religion and superstition, Biblical and jihadi themes.