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People of the Book: A Novel |  | Author: Geraldine Brooks
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $2.66
as of 11/27/2009 23:42 CST details
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New (63) Used (127) Collectible (47) from $2.66
Seller: goodwillswmi
Rating:  246 reviews
Sales Rank: 6855
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 067001821X
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780670018215
ASIN: 067001821X
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, January 2008: One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008. --Mari Malcolm 
Product Description
From the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated manuscript through centuries of exile and war
In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient bindingan insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hairshe begins to unlock the books mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the books journey from its salvation back to its creation.
In Bosnia during World War II, a Muslim risks his life to protect it from the Nazis. In the hedonistic salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the book becomes a pawn in the struggle against the citys rising anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest saves it from burning. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the Haggadahs extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed. Hannas investigation unexpectedly plunges her into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics. Her experiences will test her belief in herself and the man she has come to love.
Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is at once a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity, an ambitious, electrifying work by an acclaimed and beloved author.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 246
 Wonderful Idea - Mediocre Work November 22, 2009
Emma Grace (USA)
The idea of the book is wonderful. I love the idea of tracing the history of an item, and particularly a book, through its past owners and their personal journeys.
The actual work however lacks characters that you care about. Hanna is not someone to identify with. I agree with other reviewers that the Harvard thing gets really old, as does her relationship with her unfeeling mother. The short stories are not good enough to make you really care about any one of the people that you meet throughout the book.
The ending is terrible - You don't get enough character development to truly understand the end climax so that it all has to be explained in the last chapter. It makes it contrived and ridiculous.
Added on to that - there is not one good Christian in this book. In the afterward, she says that the only thing known about the priest, Vistorini, is his signature that is on books that were spared during the Inquisition, including the haggadah. So of course, he should be made into a smelly alcoholic who signs the haggadah partly because of a trick and a game that he plays with the rabbi who is begging that it be spared, and partly because of a drunken nightmare that he has. I wonder how his signature came to be on the other books that he did sign without games and nightmares?
I would not recommend this book. The lack of depth and character make the short histories tedious and the end ridiculous.
captivating November 18, 2009
whj
This was an absolutely wonderful book, captivating with mysterious stories and profound messages from the people of the book about the heart of humanity that is stronger than hypocricies of religious righteousness and bigotry.
 The novel People of the Bookl November 15, 2009
E. F., Meyer (Florida)
I was in need of a replacement of this novel for the local library. There were certain conditions that needed to be met. I had interaction with the seller and purchased the book because of her input.
The book was received promptly, in excellent condition and accepted by the library. I was very pleased with the purchase.
The book is a good read, somewhat choppy regarding time sequences,nevertheless, I would recommend it to readers who enjoy historical fiction.
The illuminated Haggadah November 14, 2009
Linda (CT, United States)
People of the Book is not a page turner, a suspense novel, or an adventure story. Author Brooks has taken what little is known about the Sarajevo Haggadah, with a focus on a few tiny artifacts evidently left behind, inadvertently, by some of the people who handled it in the past. The skeleton of the story hangs upon the stabilization of the book by Hanna Heath, a book conservationist working in the 1990's. As she discovers such minutia as a feather, a stain, and an insect wing, the author inserts compelling chapters in which their presence might be explained. It is these chapters, which begin during the second world war and gradually regress to the early medieval period, that make People the compelling historical novel that it is. The history of the Haggadah parallels that of the persecution of the Jews, but many of the major characters in each era are Christian or Muslim. In the end, it becomes clear that the production and preservation of a great religious work of art relies on the cooperative efforts of people of many faiths. This is a message that could not be more timely, and this is a book that is a pleasure to read and ponder.
 The Haggadah Survives Tribulent History November 11, 2009
Regis Schilken (Bethel Park, Pennsylvania)
What would it take for you to risk your life--even lose it--to rescue a treasured Jewish manuscript dating back many centuries? People of the Book: A Novel is a story devoted to several individuals who have taken this risk to preserve the Sarajevo Haggadah. This Jewish prayer book has been dated back to 1350. It was written in Barcelona Spain.
The story begins in 1996 when Hanna Heath, a rare-book expert agrees to analyze and then conserve the famed Jewish manuscript. She has flown from her Australian home to Bosnia where she begins work scrutinizing the ancient Haggadah. She does not plan to restore the book to its initial grandeur: "To restore a book to the way it was when it was made is to lack respect for its history." Rather, she will work to prevent any deteriorated or damaged parts from further harm.
Removing the books disintegrating binding, Hanna discovers the wing of an insect and a small white hair. On one page she discovers what appears to be a wine stain mixed in with a deeper ruddier color. Other evidence suggests the bottom of some pages had been wet, and then there are noticeable groves on the books front and rear covers that suggest some kind of hinged clasp had been in place.
At a lab in Vienna, Hanna learns that the wing fragment came from a butterfly which inhabits the upper regions of the Alps Mountains. What follows this discovery is an exciting chapter explaining how the wing fragment became lodged in the Haggadah.
Hanna's Heath's suspicion was correct about the Haggadah's wine stains. Back in the United States, she has them analyzed only to find that the reddish smears over the wine stains are human blood. The following chapter explains in detail, how the stains came to be.
Further examination of pages that seemed a bit warped by water shows that, indeed, the water contained salt crystals. People of the Book continues backward in history to tell how the book was soiled.
The white hair, Hanna learns, probably came from a painter's cat-hair brush (1480). She surmises it might have come from the very place where the exquisite Haggadah illuminations were painted. In the story that follows, it becomes obvious that Hanna is quite right.
In the left hand corner of one illustration sits a Moorish woman, her dark skin contrasting starkly with the white-skinned women sitting at an elaborate table. Hanna guesses later that this woman is the artist for all the Haggadah's illuminations and tells her story.
In between the chapters dealing with the Haggadah's story coursing backward through time, People of the Book has a second story running forward in time as Hannah reveals a hurtful, hateful, relationship with her mother, a doctor. Rejecting her daughter after an unwanted pregnancy and birth, Hanna's mother despises her all the more for choosing a wasted career examining ancient books, instead of examining people as a renowned, talented, highly intelligent doctor like her "expert" self.
As a reviewer, I enjoyed those chapters of People of the Bookdealing with the Haggadah's history. The in-between chapters disclosing Hannah's disturbed, hurtful relationship with her mother left me cold. The mother was too hateful, too intolerable. To me, she appeared unreal--artificial. I cannot imagine the most arrogant, hardened person treating an offspring so crudely--especially a physician who would have taken courses in psychology and mental health. Thus, it made little sense why Hanna would ever seek her mother's company.
But then, Hanna's own personality was peculiar. Somewhat self-absorbed, she treated people like she treated books--as objects. "... don't rely on some other sod for your emotional sustenance ... find something so absorbing that you don't have time to dwell on the woe-is-me-stuff." It becomes obvious that Hanna loses herself and escapes her mother through her professional career.
I would recommend People of the Book to those who enjoy a series of individual short stories. By this I mean the fanciful Haggadah journeys in between most chapters. Each of these tales is well-written but predictable in this sense: the reader discovers early that each Haggadah journey involves some kind of terrifying threat to the book, often to the lives of those who rescue it.
Finally, the tale would be more compelling if the exaggerated, painful, daughter-mother relationship were left out entirely. I think the book is worth reading. As fiction, it gives the reader a non-fictional sense of the terrors of past Jewish history. The Haggadah's survival down through six-plus centuries is remarkable. During that long period of time, I feel certain it has undergone countless narrow escapes with destruction similar to that detailed in People of the Book.
Interesting reads:
A Different Night, The Family Participation Haggadah
Gates of Freedom - A Passover Haggadah
March
Romances Of Colonial Days
Showing reviews 1-5 of 246
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