Awakening Ancient Assyria: Costanza Casati Breathes Life into a Lost Empire With "Babylonia"
At age sixteen, Costanza Casati's first encounter with Clytemnestra's story filled her "with unspeakable rage and grief." That visceral reaction to an ancient tale—to the justified anger of a mother whose daughter was sacrificed by her husband—would eventually launch her path as a novelist. While female rage has become a powerful force in contemporary literature, Casati's work stands out for its deep historical immersion, transforming ancient worlds into vivid, visceral experiences that resonate with modern perspectives on power, justice, and vengeance.
Born in Texas and raised in a village in Northern Italy, Casati's rigorous academic background in Ancient Greek literature profoundly shapes her storytelling approach. A graduate of the prestigious Warwick Writing MA program in the UK, her journey from screenwriter and journalist to novelist has allowed her to blend meticulous historical accuracy with rich, imaginative narratives that explore how women's anger has been suppressed, transformed, and ultimately wielded throughout history.
Her debut novel, Clytemnestra, has been celebrated in 18 territories globally and was not only shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown Award but also won the prestigious Glass Bell Award from Goldsboro Books. Now, with her second novel, Babylonia—an instant Sunday Times bestseller in the UK and scheduled for US release on January 14, 2025—Casati ventures into the brutal and beautiful world of ancient Assyria. Like Clytemnestra before it, Babylonia demonstrates Casati's remarkable ability to weave complex female characters and epic stories that speak to fundamental human experiences of ambition, power, and resilience.
In the following interview, Casati opens up about the creative process behind her enthralling narratives, particularly focusing on Babylonia. She shares insights into her exhaustive research methods, her connection to these ancient characters, and how her educational background shapes her approach to storytelling. As she discusses her journey from Clytemnestra to Babylonia, we gain a deeper understanding of how Casati has become one of historical fiction's most compelling new voices.
Jonathan Crain: Both Clytemnestra and Babylonia bring ancient worlds vividly to life. What drew you to these particular historical settings and figures?
Costanza Casati: It is always hard to describe exactly where the initial inspiration for a story comes from. Clytemnestra and Semiramis, the main characters of my novels, might seem very similar on the outside – and, in fact, have much in common – but it wasn’t their strength and ambition that drew me to their figures in the first place, as much as I loved to explore such aspects of their personalities.
With both books, I would say that inspiration came from a deep emotional reaction to very specific scenes from the myth. In the case of Clytemnestra, it was the sacrifice of Iphigenia: I learned about this horrific scene when I was young – when I read the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus for the first time at the age of sixteen – and it filled me with unspeakable rage and grief. Throughout the years, the rage never faded, especially when I witnessed the reactions that other readers had to that moment: most of the time, Clytemnestra was still the one who was blamed, not Agamemnon. It was that overwhelming feeling that allowed me to inhabit the character of Clytemnestra, and that brought me close to her.
As for Babylonia, I was drawn to the figure of Semiramis when I first read about her in a fourteenth century book called On Famous Women. I started researching her, but it was only when I found out about the tragic love triangle between Semiramis, Onnes and Ninus that I felt certain this was a story I wanted to tell. Their love story, doomed in a world of ambition and brutality, felt to me incredibly heart-breaking, and brought back that emotional connection that I had been craving.
Jonathan Crain: Did growing up in Italy, surrounded by such rich history, influence your love of ancient stories? If so, how?
Costanza Casati: I studied Greek and Latin language and literature for five years when I was really young, while I attended a high school in Italy: a liceo classico, where classics are compulsory from the age of fourteen. This definitely had an impact on me – it did change the way I saw and thought about the world. In this respect, my early education has been a big inspiration for my later work as a writer, but also, in some ways, a challenge. Growing up in Italy, I never studied any women writers, nor was I taught to empathize with any female character. This also deeply informed the way I write: I want women to be at the center of the narratives that I write, and I want my readers to learn to emphasize with them, root for them.
Jonathan Crain: What initially inspired you to write Babylonia after the success of Clytemnestra? Did the writing process differ between the two novels?
Costanza Casati: After Clytemnestra, I wanted to write about Dido, queen of Carthage, but then stumbled across the story of Semiramis, as recounted by Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who lived between 90 and 30 BCE and wrote about Semiramis’ life in great detail in his monumental work Bibliotheca Historica. Though veering more towards the mythical than the historical, Diodorus gives us the incredible narrative of a woman who rose from humble beginnings to rule one of the most powerful empires in the world. He tells us that Semiramis was an orphan, abandoned by her mother before she killed herself, that she was raised by a shepherd in the outskirts of the empire until, when she came of age, she married the governor of the province of Eber-Nari and was brought to the capital. Here, she met the king, and what followed was a tragic, tangled plot that eventually saw Semiramis ascend the throne of Assyria. I was captivated by the story.
The writing process was very different from Clytemnestra because I had to do months and months of research to really immerse myself into the world of Ancient Assyria. It also took me longer to understand and empathize with my characters – Clytemnestra had lived for so long in my head that, when I finally sat down to write the novel, I felt like I knew her intimately. Semiramis and the other MCs from Babylonia took longer to discover and understand fully. I wrote at least six (very different) drafts of this novel before I felt like I was happy with it – it is definitely the hardest thing I ever wrote.
Jonathan Crain: The central characters in both novels are powerful, complex women navigating patriarchal societies. What is it about these types of characters that compels you as a writer?
Costanza Casati: With my novels, I want to show that women in power have always existed, that this isn’t a recent phenomenon. I am especially interested in the consequences of ambition (how ambitious women have been portrayed and vilified throughout the centuries), and their multifaceted nature, the flaws and qualities that allowed them to achieve what they did. Historical and classicist Mary Beard, when writing about women and power, claims that women, throughout history, have always been seen as abusers rather than users of power. Power, ambition, desire – those are all, to this day, notions that we struggle to associate with women. And whenever we do have a woman in power, we tend to think that she has ‘manly’ qualities. Clytemnestra herself, in the Agamemnon, is always described as ‘manly’: ‘thinking like a man’, ‘maneuvering like a man’. I want to try and challenge these assumptions and the notions of power that we carry in our minds. Characters like Clytemnestra and Semiramis allow me to explore the complexities, as well as the risks, of women’s rise to power.
Jonathan Crain: How did you balance the historical accuracy of the Assyrian Empire with the creative liberties necessary for crafting a compelling narrative in Babylonia?
Costanza Casati: Babylonia is both historical fiction and myth retelling, as most events in the book are drawn either from Assyrian history or the myth of warrior-queen Semiramis. Semiramis is a mythological figure, but she is based on real-life queen Sammu-ramat, the first and only female ruler of the Assyrian Empire. In the novel, I wanted to weave together the various threads that survived of Semiramis/Sammu-ramat’s history. The backstory of Semiramis – the suicide of her mother, her adoption by a shepherd, her marriage to Onnes and the love triangle between Semiramis, Onnes and Ninus – is all based on Diodorus Siculus’ account of this extraordinary character.
At the same time, many other events in the novel are inspired by real historical events: the revolt of Assur-danin against his father and the civil war between him and Shamshi-Adad, the battle of Dur in 814 BCE, the defeat of the tribespeople of the Medes and the brutal war acts perpetrated by Shalmaneser and Ashurnasirpal. Lion hunts were a real Assyrian sport, the famous hanging garden really existed. Even if, across the centuries, they have become known as the hanging gardens ‘of Babylon’ new research indicates that these gardens were actually located in Nineveh, the last capital of Assyria under king Sennacherib. The gardens were not unique, as Sennacherib’s predecessors also created magnificent gardens, parks, and animal collections in the Assyrian capitals, including Ashurnasirpal.
Many characters in the novel are also based on real historical figures. Nisat, for instance is based on the first Assyrian queen recorded in history: Mullissu Mukkanisat Ninua, who married two kings, just like in Babylonia.
The novel is pretty accurate, except for little changes I made to accommodate the narrative – Shamshi-Adad V/Ninus, in real life, died in 811 BCE and under different circumstances – but, in terms of creative liberties, I had a lot of gaps to fills, as it always happens with ancient historical fiction. The most important thing for me was to capture the mindset and atmosphere of the period. Once I felt like a had a strong sense of this world, and I knew my characters well, I felt more confident in taking small liberties to craft a compelling narrative.
Jonathan Crain: What does your research process look like?
Costanza Casati: I wanted my research to be immersive, to recreate the texture of lived experience, especially as many people are not familiar with this fascinating world and culture. That involved research both into big themes – the coexistence of beauty and brutality, the main patterns and stories of Mesopotamian literature – and the very specific details that made this culture so unique – what kind of wine and beer did they drink? How did Assyrian governance work? What kind of jewelry did men and women wear? Did contraception exist? What were the best food recipes in Assyria? I wove a lot of these details into the book. For instance, the description of the bas-relief in the North-West Palace mirrors the actual bas-reliefs that would have been there at the time (the maps in the book also mirror the exact archeological excavations of Kalhu and the Palace). Another aspect I was really interested in was the importance of proverbs, omens and superstitions in Ancient Mesopotamia. Spilled water, running ants, cats howling in the palace … there were so many things that Assyrians interpreted as signs, and it was great to incorporate these details – apparently small, but actually very significant – into the narrative.
Jonathan Crain: The Epic of Gilgamesh plays a significant role in Babylonia. What inspired its inclusion, and how did you use it to shape the themes of the novel?
Costanza Casati: German poet Reiner Maria Rilke called Gilgamesh ‘the epic of the fear of death.’ I read Gilgamesh in its entirety for the first time in 2021, when I was researching for Babylonia. It struck me as the most eloquent and unforgettable study of grief I had ever read. Gilgamesh is the first epic ever written, a thousand years older than the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Bible. Its hero is based on an historical king who reigned in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk in 2750 BCE. Gilgamesh is an antihero, a sort of ‘superman’ who doesn’t know the difference between strength and arrogance. But love for his friend Enkidu changes him. The epic is a story about friendship, love in the face of loss, a quest for wisdom and immortality. The poem is the original quest narrative, but it is also an anti-quest: Gilgamesh loses his friend and never achieves what he has travelled so far to obtain.
The epic shaped my novel deeply, both in terms of themes and characters. Semiramis is based on Gilgamesh himself – relentless in her ambition and pursuit of power and immortality. At the same time, the relationship between Onnes and Ninus is heavily inspired by the one between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the first friendship and love story every written, a thousand years before Achilles and Patroclus. Like Gilgamesh, Babylonia is a study of love and loss, the shattering effect of grief and the endless quest for immortality.
Jonathan Crain: Semiramis’s transformation from a marginalized village girl to a powerful court figure is central to Babylonia. What was your approach to developing her character arc?
Costanza Casati: One of the most difficult things about writing Babylonia was writing Semiramis’ character arc. This is because Semiramis is no ordinary woman: an orphan abandoned by her mother when she was just an infant, she grows up with nothing and ends up becoming queen in a world where women had no power. She isn’t just an extraordinary woman, but an individual who achieved things no one else did. The question I asked myself many times was, how do I make her relatable? How do I make her human?
I wanted her to be fallible because, no matter what we achieve in life, we are all vulnerable. The beginning of the novel was key to me in this respect. In Book I of Babylonia, we see a young woman who has nothing – no respect, no love, no family. And yet, she finds the strength within herself to dream when the world around her doesn’t allow her to. We witness her fear and her humiliation, her hopes and dreams, her pain. In this sense, her past becomes her greatest weakness but also strength because, as the story progresses, no matter what people tell her, how they try to belittle her, Semiramis has this light inside of her that she has cultivated since childhood and that has allowed her to move forward.
Semiramis really is a woman determined to make her own fate in a ruthless world where women and men alike are often broken and pushed to the ground. She isn’t afraid to fall – she has done a hundred times already, and each time she managed to get back up.
Jonathan Crain: King Ninus and Onnes are both complex characters. How do you approach creating multi-faceted supporting characters who can stand on their own while enhancing the protagonist’s journey?
Costanza Casati: I always see supporting characters as main characters, because, if you think about it, each of us feels like a main character in our own life. Sasi, Ribat, Ilu, Nisat, Taria … every character in the novel has a complicated backstory, even if they do not share it. As for Ninus and Onnes, I wanted them to stand on their own, I wanted their story to exist way before Semiramis becomes attached to them. This is why, when Semiramis arrives in the capital, she is the one who feels like an intruder, as Ninus and Onnes have a relationship already: they have grown up together, loved each other, hated each other, supported each other, and we see glimpses of all of that in the first part of the novel.
Ninus is a character hungry for love and human connection. Despite all the brutality that surrounds him, despite the burden of the crown, he remains a good person, and that is his downfall. He is an idealist and doesn’t see the world for what it really is, as Onnes tells Semiramis in the novel: ‘When he loves someone, Ninus sees only beauty, warmth and depth. Cruelty, vanity, weakness … when it comes to the truth, he becomes blind.’
Onnes is the opposite: a realist who doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the world around him, he is presented in the narrative as object first – the object of love and desire of both Semiramis and Ninus – until his POV is revealed later on in the book. When that happens, the mystery around the character is finally unraveled.
Jonathan Crain: Relationships are a key theme in Babylonia. Did any particular relationship or dynamic in the book hold special significance for you as the author?
Costanza Casati: The relationship between Semiramis and Ribat is one I care deeply about. Initially Ribat wasn’t one of the three POVs, but one day his voice came to me so vividly that I had to include him in the narrative. He and Semiramis are a bit in love with each other (platonically speaking) because they recognize how similar they are. Both come from nothing and see themselves as so much more than their stations. This aspect of their personality allows them to travel from ‘the dust’ to the heavens.
Then, obviously, I love the relationship between Ninus and Onnes. It allowed me to write about queer relationships in the ancient world, as their story is heavily inspired by the brotherhood/love story/intimate friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu from the epic of Gilgamesh. There is something incredibly heartbreaking about their story: two people grown up together, bound by love, loyalty and obsession, and the struggle that they go through when they grow apart – none can live without the other.
Jonathan Crain: Your prose is often praised for being both lyrical and precise. How do you balance these elements in your writing?
Costanza Casati: I am very interested in how language can recreate the world and setting of a novel. Before I start writing a book, while researching, I compile a list of images and words that were key to the mindset of the time. I want the prose of my novels to mirror the world that I am writing about – Similes and metaphors mirroring the images that the ancients themselves would have used – while also being clear for modern readers.
For instance, for my first book Clytemnestra, I used a lot of Homeric metaphors and epithets (‘rosy-fingered dawn’, ‘wine-dark sea’) because we were seeing the world of Bronze Age Greece through the characters’ eyes – and that is how it would have looked to them. For Babylonia, I incorporated a lot of images of lions – lions were the symbol of chaos to the Assyrians, something to be celebrated but also crushed and killed – as well as clay and shadows. The idea of clay as something that lasts forever is incredibly fascinating to me. All the Mesopotamian literature that we have was carved into clay thousands of years ago.
Jonathan Crain: Both Clytemnestra and Babylonia are emotionally intense. How do you maintain your emotional engagement with the characters while writing such demanding narratives?
Costanza Casati: To me, emotional engagement is key for the success of the novel. It is probably the thing that matters the most to me as I am writing: I want my readers to feel invested in the story, whether they like the characters or not. Interestingly, emotional engagement is not something you can control – sometimes I feel like I am fully inhabiting my characters, other times I struggle to. If I feel like I am distancing myself from my character, I tend to panic, as I know that I’ll struggle to keep writing, especially emotional scenes. There aren’t specific things that I do for keeping that engagement alive. Usually, I am so obsessed with the story and the characters that I can keep that tight relationship and inhabit the characters throughout. Writing is a bit like acting in this respect: it is about letting a character take over and feeling their emotions, seeing the world through their eyes.
Jonathan Crain: With Clytemnestra being a Times bestseller and nominated for Best Fantasy in the Goodreads Choice Awards, how has the response to your debut influenced your confidence or approach to writing?
Costanza Casati: I started writing Babylonia before Clytemnestra was published so I still didn’t know how my debut was going to be received. It has been an absolute joy and honor to see readers’ reactions to Clytemnestra: knowing how loved the novel has been has definitely pushed me to do better.
At the same time, as hard as it can sometimes be, I try not to let any reaction influence my writing too much. One thing that makes a writer’s career difficult but exciting is having to learn how to write from scratch for each project (at least that’s how it is for me): being too confident in your skills at the beginning of a new draft can sometimes be unhelpful. With each book, I try to write the best book I can write, so then, once I finish, I know that the story is ready to belong to readers.
Jonathan Crain: Are there any historical figures or time periods you’re currently drawn to for your next project?
Costanza Casati: My next book is an historical fantasy set in Renaissance Italy. It is a project very special to me, but it is still a secret. Hopefully I will be able to share more about it soon.
Jonathan Crain: Do you see yourself exploring other genres in the future, or do you feel historical fiction is your home as a writer?
Costanza Casati: I definitely see myself writing in other genres – I never thought of myself as an historical fiction writer. I don’t tend to think about genres too much, not until a project is done anyway. I always try to think of the story first and foremost, and what the characters are and need to be, what the tone is, what emotions I need to convey. That said, I love history and I love doing research so historical fiction will always be something I am drawn to.
Jonathan Crain: What do you hope readers take away from your books, particularly Babylonia?
Costanza Casati: Writing about the past means having to face many harsh realities that we’d often rather forget. I want my readers to learn about worlds and societies they might not have been familiar with before, and I want them to root for – or, at least, understand – my characters. With each book that I write I try to humanize the historical and mythical figures as much as possible, without making them better people than they actually were – that would be a disservice to the ancient stories and histories. Most of all, I want to write books with complicated, layered relationships at the center, and with a wide cast of female characters who aren’t necessarily perfect, but inspiring.
Jonathan Crain: What advice would you give to aspiring writers who want to delve into historical fiction?
Costanza Casati: I would recommend delving into historical fiction if you have a real passion for research – otherwise, it can be quite daunting. More generally, for aspiring writers, I like to say: write what you are passionate about, that will make your story unique and will imbue it with meaning. People love what other people are passionate about.
Jonathan Crain: If you could spend a day in one of the worlds you’ve written about, which one would you choose and why?
Costanza Casati: As much I love the worlds of ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, I don’t think I’d be able to survive for long in Sparta or Assyria. I think that, out of all the settings I’ve written about, I’d probably choose the one I am researching now: Renaissance Italy.
Jonathan Crain: What books or authors have inspired you recently, and do you draw inspiration from contemporary writers?
Costanza Casati: Recent books that I have loved were Intermezzo and Crossroads for contemporary fiction – interestingly, I noticed some similarities in the styles of Rooney and Franzen: the way in which they both manage to convey the complexities of human feeling always amazes me. I have also been reading a lot of Leigh Bardugo lately: I love her novels, especially her latest one, The Familiar, which is an historical fantasy set in Spain at the time of the Inquisition. Another author who inspires me in terms of the ambitious worldbuilding and powerful, complex female characters is Samantha Shannon – I love The Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night.
In discussing ancient sources and modern literature, Casati reveals herself as both a student of history and a thoroughly contemporary voice. This duality defines her work. While her narratives are firmly rooted in ancient worlds—the blood-soaked halls of Mycenae and the brutal splendor of the Assyrian Empire—they speak directly to modern concerns about power, justice, and the price of ambition.
Casati's approach to historical fiction transcends simple categorization. She creates richly layered narratives where power, ambition, and human frailty drive both personal and political drama. In Babylonia, the intricate dance of loyalty and betrayal between Ninus and Onnes—a relationship she describes as “bound by love, loyalty and obsession”—is as central to the story as Semiramis's rise to power. Drawing on the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest narrative of friendship and loss, Casati weaves together intimate personal stories with grand historical events, creating an epic that examines what drives humans to seek power, love, and immortality.
Through this expansive lens, the rage that first moved Casati as a sixteen-year-old reader of Aeschylus has matured into something more nuanced: a deep commitment to writing historical figures in their full complexity, with all their flaws and strengths intact. Her meticulous research allows her to reconstruct the grand events of their lives and the intimate textures of their worlds.
"Writing about the past means having to face many harsh realities that we'd often rather forget," Casati observes. Yet her work suggests that these harsh realities—and our visceral reactions to them—can illuminate our own time. As "Babylonia" makes its way to American readers, it offers not just an escape into an exotic past, but a mirror in which to examine our own assumptions about power, gender, and justice. In Casati's hands, the ancient world feels startlingly immediate, and its women's voices—their grief, their rage, their triumph—ring out across the millennia with renewed clarity and force.
You can purchase Babylonia from most major booksellers, including Blackwells, Waterstones, and Amazon in the UK (Michael Joseph, 2024) and in the USA from Amazon or Barnes & Noble (Sourcebooks Landmark, January 14, 2025).
Excellent interview, another must read especially as I’m just finishing Pat Barker’s The Voyage Home about Agamemnon’s return to a vengeful Clytemnestra.