The Barbarians at the Gates

The explosive novel of a decent man's journey into Evil. "Fantastic . . . gripping" -- Publisher's Weekly

"Compelling"--Seattle Daily Times

"Characters of a quasi-mythical stature . . . A LESSON FOR ALL MANKIND"-- National Review

"Bankowsky writes with a scalpel and his prose may be likened to the gathering forces of a tornado. When the climax of his remarkable new novel is reached the impact is at once ineluctable and devastating . . . the novel is a work of revelation" --Rabi Morris Margolies, Kansas City Star


Their fates collided on the eve of a holocaust . . .

Christian--a tormented Nazi officer
Claudia--his sexually insatiable wife
The Monk of St. Procula--madman or saint?
The Polish aristocrats--the debauched, the damned

Before World War II, in Hitler's Berlin, Christian Jan Romansky, a quiet apolitical university professor, was a good, loving, civilized and sane man. But is it possible to remain civilized among barbarians? to love amid depravity and lust? to stay sane in a world gone mad? If not, is it at least possible to atone?
Europe's tragedy is Christian's as well. In 1942 he finds himself a reluctant SS officer, commanding a rail junction and supply depot in the remote marshlands of occupied Poland. Just before All Soul's Eve a trainload of Jews bound for the death camps at Belzec is detained at his depot. What follows is a shattering confrontation of good and evil, and a night of hell that ends in riot, madness, massacre--and a miracle.