Book Review: People of the Book

Geraldine Brooks is the author of Year of Wonders and March, two novels that I enjoyed very much. I was looking forward to reading People of the Book, and I was not disappointed. A work of fiction woven around a true event from recent history, it tells the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a 500-year old illuminated Hebrew manuscript thought to have been destroyed during the 1995 shelling of Sarajevo. As it turned out, the manuscript had been spirited away to safety by a Muslim librarian and resurfaced after the war.

People of the Book opens in the spring of 1996, shortly after the Bosnian war ended. The hiding place of the Sarajevo Haggadah has been revealed. The United Nations, anxious to put the memory of the ethnic cleansing behind them (and possibly to distract from the fact that their inaction -- and that of the world's leading powers -- led to the genocide) wants to put the Haggadah back on display as soon as possible, as a show of the racial and cultural unity that historically flourished in the region. They hire Hanna Heath, an Australian specialist in the conservation of ancient manuscripts, to inspect the book as well as to write about it for a catalog that will accompany the exhibit. During her inspection, Hanna finds artifacts within the manuscript's pages, which she hopes will unlock some of the mysteries of its origins.

Part art history, part Bosnian history, part thriller -- this was an absolutely compelling book to read. Brooks used each artifact that Hanna found in the book to tell the story of how one part of the book came to be: Why were there such beautiful illuminations, extremely rare for a Hebrew text? How did the book survive the fires of the Inquisitors? How did it come to be in Sarajevo? Why were people compelled to save this particular text over the course of a turbulent five centuries?

Entwined with the story of the Haggadah is Hanna Heath's own turbulent story and, I can't help but think, a condemnation of the kind of extremism that can lead to genocide. Brooks was not heavy-handed about pointing it out, but 1996 was not that long ago and there are plenty of situations happening now that are reminiscent of the past. I found this passage to be particularly revealing. It is a discussion about the Haggadah between Hanna and another book conservator:

"It's still doing what it was meant to do, or it will be, as soon as it goes into the museum. It was made to teach and it will continue to teach. And it might teach a lot more than just the Exodus story."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, from what you've told me, the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You've got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize 'the other' -- it just sort of rears up and and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists ... same old, same old. It seems to me the book, at this point, bears witness to all that."

This was an excellent book. I highly recommend it.