People of the Book

Synopsis
Creates a fictional history for the real-life Sarajevo haggadah.

My thoughts
I've wanted to read anything by Geraldine Brooks for a while. Her books are always well reviewed, and she writes about an appealingly diverse array of subjects.

For People of the Book, Brooks uses historical records of the Sarajevo haggadah as the scaffolding for her story (detailed in an article she wrote for The New Yorker in 2007) and then uses her imagination and formidable storytelling powers to fill in the blanks. The haggadah, which tells the story of the Jews' exodus from Egypt, has an extraordinary history. It was created in Spain and survived Ferdinand and Isabella's expulsion of the Jews in 1492. In 1609 a Catholic priest in Venice spared the haggadah from destruction in the Pope's Inquisition. And in 1894, the haggadah arrived in Vienna for conservation (which actually did more damage than anything else). During World War II, a Muslim librarian at the Bosnian National Museum risked his life to keep the book out of the Nazis' hands. The book was saved by another Muslim librarian during the civil war that tore through the Balkans in the 1990s. Brooks fictionalizes all of these historical events and strings them together with a present-day narrative in which an Australian rare book specialist is hired to preserve the haggadah. She finds salt, wine stains, hair, an insect wing on or within the pages of the haggadah, and Brooks uses these to flash back to various points in the book's past.  

People of the Book is a testament to what Sarajevo used to be before Nazism, communism, and civil war. It was a modern city where  Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted. It's also a timely reminder that all three religions share the same roots. And it's a book that celebrates the good in humanity in times of evil and oppression; one of the most remarkable things about the haggadah is that it survived. Many people risked their lives or their livelihoods to guard the book throughout the centuries.

My town just selected Caleb's Crossing for its 2015 One Book One Town program and I picked up a copy of Nine Parts of Desire from my library's used book sale, so I have plenty more Geraldine Brooks to look forward to.

Bottom line
Worth a reread in a few years.

Fine print
People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
Genre: historical fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book.