A book you can’t rush but must sit back and become totally absorbed in. Convoluted with fascinating detail and full of short mysteries, almost like a series of linking short stories, it all hangs round the research into an ancient Jewish tome, The Sarajevo Haggadah, from the 1490s. Within its binding are a series of clues/stains which are explored in a multi-time frame novel of the highest order. The researchers’ background is also revealed along the way. Highly recommended.
The bestselling novel that follows a rare manuscript through centuries of exile and war, from the author of The Secret Chord and of March, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called "a tour de force" by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding-an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair-only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultranationalist fanatics.
