People of the Book
Geraldine BrooksFrom 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...