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From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated manuscript through centuries of exile and war

In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the book’s journey from its salvation back to its creation.

In Bosnia during World War II, a Muslim risks his life to protect it from the Nazis. In the hedonistic salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the book becomes a pawn in the struggle against the city’s rising anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest saves it from burning. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the Haggadah’s extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed. Hanna’s investigation unexpectedly plunges her into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics. Her experiences will test her belief in herself and the man she has come to love.

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is at once a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity, an ambitious, electrifying work by an acclaimed and beloved author.

User Reviews about People of the Book: A Novel

The book chronicles the discovery of a very old haggadah (a Jewish book) in Sarajevo during the time of the Bosnia/Croatia war. An Australian expert(the heroine) is called in to restore/conserve the book. In the book she discovers evidence of things that should not be in the book. The story then involves how those things got into the book, and how the book came to be in its present location and state. While that sounds boring, Brooks has written a fascinating story which chronicles the persecution of the Jews throughout history, which is why it is dark. The book is compelling and her writing keeps you interested right up to the end. -- A compelling, but dark read.

Geraldine Books, the author of March and Year of Wonders, has written another inspired work of historical fiction. People of the Book is the story of an ancient Hebrew manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, and the book's conservator, Hanna Heath.
The novel alternates between the dramatic tales of the people of the haggadah and Hanna, who coaxes their stories from artifacts found in the book's binding. Who created the haggadah? Why is it so beautifully illuminated when Jewish belief at the time was firmly against illustrations? How did this fragile book survive six centuries?
In tracing the haggadah back to fifteenth-century Spain, Hanna finds that a disparate group of individuals throughout Europe played a role in the creation and preservation of the codex. Foolish, brave Lola, a Jewish girl in World War II Sarajevo, the alcoholic Venician priest Vistoirni, and the talented Muslim artist Zahra bint Ibrahim al-Tarek are a few of the characters whose lives were touched by the book.
The historical characters are vividly rendered, the contemporary characters less so. Nonetheless, People of the Book is a winning combination of history and suspense.
-- Bookish Suspense

A friend convinced me to buy this at a book sale our synagogue was running for Haiti last Spring. I finally started reading it this weekend and was once again sorry I'd waited to work on this gem. It was one of those stay up past midnight books, and when I was done I was a little emotionally exhausted.

The story of Hanna, the book conservationist who arrives in Bosnia to restore the book in 1996, and those who helped create the book intertwine and unfold backwards. Hanna, like Bosnia, like much of the world, is emotionally worn from an unloving childhood and even as an adult struggles with her mother. She finds out that she is not just studying the book but also aspects of herself; she is very much like the neurosurgeon mother she wars with, who claims that she doesn't just save lives, she saves souls. So, too, does Hanna- she doesn't just save things, she traces its story so that the creators as well as the creations may live on.

We come into the story- even the book- knowing that for all of the race-baiting hatred fomented over hundreds of years, many areas of the world lived in relative tolerance for long stretches of time, and it was during these periods that beautiful and learned creations were made possible. The accidents or "flaws" in the book help tell that human story, all of the chapters laced with varying degrees of the desire to illuminate the world with something better when even mere survival is not guaranteed. Zahra, the Muslim woman who is sold into slavery but becomes a magnificent artist in the employ of an emir and later uses her art to open the world to a deaf-mute boy; Ruth, the secret scholar in Spain of 1492 who manages to salvage not only her father's final piece of work in the haggadah but also her nephew despite the Inquisition and the Explulsion Order; the priest Vistorini and his friend/nemesis rabbi Aryeh of Venice who are united in their temptations, desperations, love of learning and, though unacknowledged, their past; the Jewish-Viennese doctor who is trying to make sense of the decaying world he lives in, symbolized by his growing list of patients who are literally rotting from the inside out with syphilis, including a desperate book-binder who falls back onto anti-Semitism to explain why his world is slipping away; Serif Kamal, the learned man of languages and books who risks his life to save not only books but people from the teeth of the Nazis; Lola, the poor, uneducated Jewish girl who loses everything not once but twice but lives to restore the book to it's rightful place; and Ozren Karaman, who risks his life to save the book for the future of his war-torn city even while the city destroys his family.

All of the historical characters jump off the page and demanded that I hear and understand their stories. I couldn't put it down until I had done so. It was, then, with disappointment that I returned to the present-day character of Hanna. Compared to the people whose stories she (partially) uncovered, Hanna seemed emotionally immature and oddly unsympathetic. These characters were holding their breath and walking a tightrope to survive without compromising all of their values. A woman of both means and education who was simply *unhappy* was a let down, and the happy ending at the end was unsatisfying.

That's why it got 4-stars, not 5. But you'll be so engrossed in the tale of the book and all of the people- and peoples- who had a hand in it that you'll be able to overlook that. -- Couldn't put it down

I loved this historical novel. It wove the past and the present in an interesting mix of stories of people's lives of many generations. I usually do not like books of this type but it was chosen by my book club and I'm glad I read it. I learned a lot about the lives of Jews throught the centuries and art/book binding which is really an art! -- Interesting Historical Book