People of the Book: Standing the Test of Time

A Review by Jia Gayles

Acclaimed author Geraldine Brooks fills in the missing pieces of the Sarajevo Haggadah’s origins in a fictional narrative that explores the indomitable spirit of humankind.

The old adage goes, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Today, the Sarajevo Haggadah, an unusually ornate illuminated Jewish text, is under the protective watch of The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina; yet its real-life journey from 14th century Spain to Sarajevo is veiled in mystery. The haggadah is used in the Passover celebration to describe the book of Exodus and the ritual of the Seder. Medieval Jews were thought to espouse the Third Commandment forbidding the use of, "any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth," to which the Sarajevo Haggadah brazenly contradicts with its gleaming copper and gold inked pages. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March and once a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Bosnia, Somalia and the Middle East, deftly fleshes out the spare details available on the ancient codex’s journey in People of the Book.

Hanna Heath is a renowned book conservationist charged with traveling to embattled mid-1990s Sarajevo to prepare the haggadah for a museum exhibition. Her quick-witted humor and independent spirit are the perfect recipe for an endearing heroine. “Me, I’m a complete pessimist,” she muses, while waiting for her first chance to examine the book under military surveillance. “If there’s a sniper somewhere in the country I’m visiting, I fully expect to be the one in his crosshairs.” While she examines the book, the chief librarian of the museum, Ozren Karaman, hovers nearby. When he extends a dinner invitation, Hanna dismisses her earlier annoyance at having a “baby sitter” because she wants more details on how Ozren risked his life to rescue the haggadah as the city was besieged by heavy shelling. Dinner moves quickly from the restaurant to the bedroom, and the two develop a meaningful, if hasty, love affair. In a case of art mirroring life, two Muslim librarians were declared heroes for endangering their lives to retrieve the sacred text during World War II and the occupation of Sarajevo.

Hanna’s examination of the haggadah reveals several clues: a wine stain, salt crystals, a white hair and the remnants of a butterfly wing. During her quest to reveal the book’s secrets, she asks colleagues to perform tests on the samples. As each clue is solved, at least scientifically through DNA analysis at MIT or favor from Scotland Yard, the next chapter travels back in time to the cities of Venice, Tarragona, Seville and Vienna, giving voice to the individuals who either guarded the book or sought to destroy it during the turbulent Spanish Inquisition or the Nazi regime. Here, Brooks reveals her most treasured skill, breathing life into the distant past by crafting relatable characters for the modern ear. An obnoxious Venetian priest becomes a small parentless child, an astute rabbi wrestles with an unseemly addiction and a syphilitic book binder desperately grasps at the last shreds of his sanity. In a heartbreaking passage, Brooks describes the death of a World War II rebel fighter and his sister who are too sick to keep moving, “Embracing his little sister, he stepped off the bank and onto the ice…They stood there for a moment, as the ice groaned and cracked. Then it gave way.” This riveting image epitomizes the author’s dedication to each character, so lovingly carved out with her pen in life and in death. Brooks’ clear voice and impeccable research also brought the infamous Black Plague to life in Year of Wonders, where she expertly detailed each oozing sore with such delicacy that you were engrossed rather than grossed out.

Also on the menu, is a strained relationship between Hanna and her mother, a neurosurgeon who considers her daughter’s career little more than child’s play as compared to the life-saving work of a doctor. Brooks molds their relationship on an ill-structured house of cards – inevitably it will implode. Through the mother-daughter dynamic, the source of Hanna’s low self-esteem and commitment issues are revealed.

The real haggadah survived centuries of war and displacement. Its keepers outwitted Nazis seeking to eradicate Jewish documents and Spanish inquisitors willing to torture and kill Jews who converted to Catholicism and were found with any physical remnants of their heritage. People of the Book honors their struggle and indomitable spirit. The author is firmly in the driver’s seat of a time machine that propels the plot forward and neatly unfurls it with the gracefulness of a blooming rose.

In the end, Hanna discovers a startling clue that leads to the true haggadah artist, and along the way she learns to believe in her own self-worth and abilities. Geraldine Brooks brings the book full circle and effectively produces a winding narrative that proves, though truth may be stranger than fiction, imagination can produce a pretty amazing story too.