Attic Whispers from The Blue Mountains; Fact or Fiction #5
[August 2026 Edition]
The forger who hid a secret in a lily pond
Greetings from my attic in the Blue Mountains, my friends!
In the last newsletter, I asked you whether scientists have discovered that so-called junk DNA is not junk at all — that it contains regulatory sequences and genetic switches whose functions we are only beginning to understand, and that some researchers believe hidden within it are keys to diseases we cannot yet cure.
Here is your answer.
Fact. The science is real, it is current, and it is moving faster than most people realise. The term “junk DNA” was coined in the 1970s and became one of the most consequential misnomers in the history of biology. The ENCODE project and subsequent research have demonstrated that vast portions of the genome previously dismissed as non-functional are in fact deeply active. What they do, and what they might tell us about human disease and human potential, is one of the most contested and consequential questions in science today.
I did not invent Professor K’s obsession. I borrowed it from reality and followed it to a place reality has not yet reached — but may.
That is the contract I make with every book in this series. The science is real. The history is real. The fiction is what happens when you ask: what if someone got there first?
Now. Before I tell you about Novella #2, here is today’s statement. This one comes from the Warsaw Ghetto — from a chapter of history that I found almost impossible to write, and impossible not to write.
During the German occupation of Warsaw, Jewish artists and craftsmen inside the Ghetto continued to work — painting, forging documents, copying masterpieces — sometimes under direct SS orders, sometimes in secret, sometimes both at once. There are documented cases of Jewish forgers who substituted their own copies for original artworks, returning the genuine paintings to their owners while delivering perfect fakes to the SS. These men worked under conditions of unimaginable danger, with materials they had to smuggle in piece by piece, knowing that discovery meant death. Some of them signed their forgeries with hidden marks — a private record of what they had done, invisible to anyone who did not know where to look.
Fact or fiction?
But first, let me tell you about The Forgotten Painting.
It begins with a masterpiece coming to auction. A painting that should not exist. A painting that carries a history so tangled, so dark, and so improbable that the moment it appears in public, it sets in motion a chain of events that nobody in that auction room is prepared for.
That is all I will say about the story itself. Because The Forgotten Painting is a novella that rewards patience and punishes spoilers. What I can tell you is what it is really about — underneath the plot, underneath the art world and the auction houses and the archival detective work.
It is about what we owe the dead.
Not in a sentimental way. In a very specific, very practical way. When something precious is taken from someone — taken by force, taken by terror, taken by the machinery of organised murder — and then recovered decades later, who does it belong to? The answer seems obvious until you look closely. And when you look closely, it stops being obvious at all.
I sat with that question for a long time before I wrote this novella. I read the legal cases. I read the testimony of survivors and their families. I read the arguments made by museums and governments and private collectors, each of them with their own version of rightful ownership. And I came to understand that the question of who owns a stolen thing is never really about the thing. It is about what the theft meant. About what was destroyed when it was taken. About whether returning the object can ever return what was lost along with it.
The Forgotten Painting does not answer that question cleanly. I do not think it should. But it asks it honestly, and it asks it through characters who have earned the right to be heard.
There is a man at the centre of this story who did something brave and true and completely secret. He left no record of what he had done — except one. Hidden where almost no one would think to look. I find that kind of courage — quiet, unwitnessed, uncelebrated — more moving than almost anything else I have written.
The Forgotten Painting is shorter than the novels. But it is not lighter. Some of the heaviest things I have ever put on the page are in these pages.
The answer to today’s question is waiting in the next newsletter.
P.S. The Forgotten Painting sits between Book #3 and Book #4 in the reading sequence. It is the right moment to pause, to let the history breathe, and to ask yourself what you would have done in the same situation.
The answer to today’s question is waiting in the next newsletter.
If you haven’t read The Forgotten Painting before, you can get it right here now: https://geni.us/
In the Imperial Crypt, Vienna, where it all happened …
P.S. The Forgotten Painting is Novella #2 in the series. If you are reading in order, you are now deep enough into Jack’s world to understand what drives him. This book will test that understanding in ways you may not expect.
STAY SAFE, STAY CHEERFUL, and please STAY IN TOUCH.
Sincerely,
Gabriel Farago
