Novel
The Snake of Babylon
The second Mina Osman archaeological thriller, moving from post-war Iraq into the contested history of early Christianity and Gnostic traditions.
The Bulgarian edition was the first published edition of the novel and forms part of its publication history.
The story
Iraq, 2006
The war has brought devastation and chaos. A series of unexplained massacres attracts the attention of American counterintelligence.
Archaeologist Mina Osman and historian Michelle encounter a mysterious engraving on an old amulet. Their investigation leads towards shrines associated with the prophet Daniel and into a conflict surrounding an ancient Gnostic sect whose surviving knowledge could challenge accepted accounts of early Christianity.
Research behind the novel
Early Christianity, texts & objects
The research grew from a long-standing interest in the origins of Christianity and the unstable period in which different traditions, texts and communities competed before later orthodoxy hardened. Gnostic gemstones, amulets and the material traces of belief provided a particularly fruitful way into that world.
As with The 13th Tablet, only a fraction of that research belongs in the novel. The aim is not to reproduce scholarship on the page, but to use real objects, historical problems and unresolved questions to make the fictional stakes convincing.
Edition