People of the Book

Geraldine Brooks

7/1/2008

Australian native Hanna Heath is a rare book conservator. One night she gets an urgent call to come to Sarajevo, Bosnia. The missing Sarajevo Haggadah has been brought to light again after disappearing during the war in 1992. Four years later she is now to check it over, make repairs that can be done without ruining the history of the book, and trying to discover the provenance of it.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is an unusual codex. It is a Jewish Passover haggadah with ornate drawings that were common in Christian texts of the 1600's, but not the Jewish texts. The drawings are exquisite, made with gold and silver foil and the finest paints of the time with their rich colors. It has been in Sarajevo for almost 100 years, most recently under the protection of Muslem collectors in the Sarajevo museum. It was a Muslem librarian who rescued and hid it while the city was under seige in 1992.

As Hanna is studying and repairing the book, she finds the little treasures in it that tell its own history - an insect wing, a white hair, a wine stain, and other signs that add to its mystery as well as tell their own story.

In Gealdine Brooks' hands, each of the treasures does tell a story. This novel is a cunning weave of Hanna in 1996 through 2003 and stories from the past that help define the text. There is the Muslem museum curator and the Jewish girl during World War II that are able to hide the codex from the Nazis. There is the Austrian doctor who takes the book in payment for an expensive treatment. There is the priest in Venice who has the power to have the book destroyed because it is against the Christian faith. The creator of the codex has a story - and so does the illustrator. These are set again turbulent times in history like the Spanish expulsion of the Jews in 1492 along with the Spanish Inquisition.

Hanna also has a story - not in a turbulent world but in her own upheavals as she is working with and later researching the book's history and provenance. Before she returns to Australia, she will question her own worth and skills as a rare book conservator.

People of the Book is fascinating. Brooks has written a novel that focuses on religious conflicts over the past four centuries yet stays firmly grounded in the present. An insensitive reader may put the past in the past - "that was then, not now". People of the Book reminds us that the past repeats itself. Religious racism isn't only against the Jews although they are the people afflicted through this novel. While the Jews are the oppressed in this novel, it is the Jews, Christians, and Muslems working together that preserve the Sarajevo Haggadah.

This isn't a quick read, but the reader's attention is kept throughout. Each story is long enough to pull in and then leaves the reader wanting more when going on to the next one. People of the Book is one to read.

The dedication was enough to recommend the book to me: "For the librarians".

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