Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March (book 258) and Years of Wonders, is a novelist and a non-fiction writer who had been a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. This book was a NYT Bestseller.

This novel was inspired by the true story of the illustrated Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. For the known facts, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarajevo_Haggadah, which begins with “The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is the oldest Sephardic Haggadah in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is presently owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display. The Sarajevo Haggadah is handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold. It opens with 34 pages of illustrations of key scenes in the Bible from creation through the death of Moses. Its pages are stained with wine, evidence that it was used at many Passover Seders. It is considered to be the most beautiful illuminated Jewish manuscript in existence and one of the most valuable books in the world. In 1991 it was appraised at $700 million.” This web site continues with the known history of this unique book, including how a Bosnian librarian took a great chance of keeping the book from the Nazis who were collecting anything rare and valuable, such as paintings and books. The novel has a two-page map showing the various places in Europe the book had traveled over the centuries. (You can also click on the Amazon web link below to see the map as well as other reviews.) The book’s 4-pp Afterword also covers well the known facts as well as how Geraldine Brooks came to learn of them.

I suggest one first read the facts in Wikipedia's web site (or in her Afterword) before reading the novel or to decide if one wants to read the novel. While some of the facts in the novel are true to the Sarajevo Haggadah’s known history, most of the plot and all of the characters are imaginary. The book opens with a young woman, Hanna Heath, an expert book restorer who was selected to repair the damage done to the codex over the years. For me the best parts of this novel are the beginning where Hannah discovers interesting things upon her careful examination of the book in Sarajevo, such as an insect wing, parts of a feather, the wine stains, saltwater, and a white hair. Hanna had experts examine each of these surprising finds and try to date each one. In describing this, Brooks alternates chapters about Hanna with chapters about each of these surprising things found within the book and the fictional characters who caused them to occur. For these chapters Geraldine Brooks creates a few people and goes into what I felt was excessive details in building up the characters involved. I felt such excess details in these chapters detracted from the main thread of the story and that Brooks could have done well enough with far less character building. The answers as to how these surprising finds came to be in the codex did not require so much detail. The answers themselves were of interest, certainly. However, in building up all these characters, each of a different time period, Brooks described that time period and how people of the various religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – interacted so as to allow this unique and beautifully illuminated book to survive those who wanted to destroy it. Readers who love all the details of a mystery story probably would not share my opinion of excessive character-building in this novel. Part of the building of Hanna’s character was the horrible relationship she had with her mother. To my mind their many conflicts added nothing to the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah and had little to do with its unusual history that Brooks created in fiction to account for the surprising finds within the codex. I’m sure I could have been well satisfied with this story had it been told in about 200 pages or so.