Book Review
People of the Book
By GERALDINE BROOKS
Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT In 1996, a rare book expert is summoned to Sarajevo by the United Nations to analyze and repair an invaluable book. The expert is Australian Hanna Heath, and the book is a centuries-old illuminated Haggadah. The Haggadah is the text that accompanies the Jewish Passover Seder.

Although Hanna is an acknowledged expert, she realizes that she is chosen over older and more experienced professionals because she is considered neutral in a task complicated by recent conflictand ethnic struggles. Her personal story enters right away as she becomes involved with the handsome Sarajevan who has rescued the manuscript from destruction during the Bosnian war. Just to complicate things further, his wife was killed in the war, and his baby son gravely injured.

Hanna's own history is complicated in different ways, but the most interesting aspect of this book is the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is traced back through the years as Hanna finds clues to its history, and Brooks imagines what happened when. The clues include an insect wing, a wine (and blood) stain, a cat's hair, and a saltwater mark.

Chapters move from the present back to 1940 in Sarajevo, 1894 in Vienna, 1609 in Venice, Spain in 1492 (yes), and Seville in 1480. Characters include people from these periods as well as the contemporary ones. Thus we have "the people of the book."

A few are based on real people, such as the Muslim couple who saved the Haggadah from the Nazis, Judah Aryeh, a rabbi from the early years, and the Sarajevan who really did save the Haggadah during the Bosnian war, even Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a real book, and Brooks has woven her novel around it.

Danger, oppression, and heroism mark the adventure of the book. Sometimes events and coincidences are contrived to fitthe story she tells, but the reader hardly has time to complain as the story unfolds.

Hanna probably speaks for the author when she says, "I wanted to give a sense of the people of the book, the different hands that had made it, used it, and protected it. I wanted it to be a gripping narrative, even suspenseful." In this she has succeeded, offering us right at the end another surprise.

The People of the Book is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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