People of the Book

Recommended by Ilisa Barbash, curator of visual anthropology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

Among the many themes Brooks touches upon in “People of the Book” are instances when individuals of different faiths — Jews, Muslims, and Christians — act with extreme bravery and/or kindness. These moments, some imaginary, some real, occur in the most tragic and trying of times, including the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the breakup of Yugoslavia.

At the center of this fictional account is the real-life Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, a Passover text, which made its way from its origin in Spain to Italy to the National Museum Sarajevo, when, during World War II, the museum’s curator hid it from the Nazis in a small mountain-town mosque until the end of the war.

Brooks’ book centers on a fictitious Australian art restorer, Hanna, whose forensic task to examine the manuscript during the Bosnian war turns the narrative into a mystery about the Haggadah’s journey. Clues lie in a single hair, an insect wing (both fictional), barely visible inscriptions, parchment source, binding materials, and curious figures in the illustrations themselves (all real).

Brooks’ extensive research, including observing the conservation of the actual Haggadah “under heavy guard at the European Union Bank,” enabled her to create plausible, engaging supporting characters from the life history of the book. Each character is brought to life, replete with families, loves, fears, idealism, and faith. It is up to the spirited yet ever-professional Hanna, one of the few characters who speaks in the first person, to bring the Haggadah (now added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register) into the 21st century, where the book’s cultural significance and interfaith history can endure.