People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks – 372 pages
Book Blurb:
Inspired by a true story, “People of the Book” is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author.
Called “a tour de force” by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain.
When it falls to Australian rare book expert Hanna Heath to conserve this priceless work, the tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding—a butterfly wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—only begin to unlock the book’s deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.
My Review: 4.5 stars
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks is an absolutely beautiful story about the journey of the historical Sarajevo Haggadah and the book conservator who is researching it. Brooks is well known for her books March and Years of Wonder. This book is written with precision, great historical detail and had perfectly sectioned epochs while the Haggadah was in someone else’s hands.
I’ve never given the Haggadah’s origin much thought, but this novel has given me greater understanding and insight to it history. Hanna Heath, our protagonist and researcher has also given the reader an insider’s look at the depth and breadth of life as a book conservator.
Evocative, unusual and stunningly written.
Quotes I liked:
A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.”
“…The Haggadah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox.”
“How was it that he could remember not remembering, and yet the fugitive facts themselves remained so elusive? How could he misplace the skills of a lifetime? Where did such knowledge go?”
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