People of the Book

Author: Geraldine Brooks
Publisher: Penguin 2008

Hanna Heath is a book conservator from Sydney, Australia.  She was presented with a rare opportunity to perform the necessary stabilization work of the Sarajevo Haggadah in 1996.  

Sarajevo Haggadah is a medieval Hebrew manuscript that surfaced in Sarajevo in 1894.  It was sold to the national museum by a man named Joseph Kohen.  It was saved by a Muslim librarian under the nose of a Nazi general in 1941, and again saved by a Muslim librarian during the Bosnian war in 1992.   The book was also saved from destruction by an official censor of the Pope’s Inquisition in 1609 with the inscription “Revisto per mi.” meaning "Surveyed by me".

This was created at a time when Jewish belief was firmly against illustrations of any kind.  It was thought that the commandments in Exodus "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness of anything" has suppressed figurative art by medieval Jews.  This book is a counterexample to this belief.

In this story, the illustrations in the book were created in Seville in 1480 and the Haggadah itself including illustrations was created in Tarragona in 1492.  

During the stabilization work, Hanna discovered a tiny fragment of an insect wing, a fine white hair, some red stains on some pages, and some white cristals.  The book may have been rebound many times in the past, but the only known rebound was done in Vienna in the 1890s.  This known rebound was very badly done and two possible claps to hold the pages flat went missing.

The author takes you to the past through the artifacts found by Hanna during her restoration work and tells the story of the “people of the book”.  By doing so she exposes the cruelties the Jewish people underwent from all places they (were forced to) live from 1492 to 1996.  

This is a very good novel.