Judy Batalion: I Never Feel Like My Work Is Complete

Writer’s Digest
April 5, 2026

In this interview, author Judy Batalion discusses how a curiosity about 1930s-Poland helped inspire her new novel, The Last Woman of Warsaw.

What prompted you to write this book?

While writing my last book, The Light of Days, the story of Jewish teenage girls who fought the Nazis from the ghettos in Poland, I kept asking: What kind of society had created these extraordinary and stylish young women? I became obsessed with 1930s Poland, and especially with Warsaw, an exhilarating locus of cultural florescence that’s been eclipsed by what came after. In 1938, Warsaw overflowed with theaters, vaudeville, cabaret, nightclubs with revolving dancefloors, and fashion shows—it was "the Paris of the North.” I wanted to delve into this dazzling setting that I’d known so little about (which also happens to be where my own grandparents lived) and share it with my readers.