Selected Product:
| People of the Book: A Novel
Hardcover
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Publisher: Viking Adult
Release Date: January 2008
ISBN-10: 067001821X
ISBN-13: 9780670018215
List Price: $25.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning 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 binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the book’s 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 city’s 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 Haggadah’s extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed. Hanna’s 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.
An excellent book
| Customer Rating: | This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The author uses the real Sarajevo Haggadah as starting point for a fascinating fictional account of how it was so beautifully illustrated, how it came to be written, and how it was taken from place to place all over Europe over many centuries, and weaves that all together with the personal life of the book conservator who becomes involved with the Haggadah. The totally unexpected ending is amazing!
I liked the book so much that I bought the quite expensive taped version for a visually handicapped friend. |
Fascinating!
| Customer Rating: | | I couldn't stop reading this book. It was like a jig-saw puzzle with each piece just fitting perfectly. The history combined with the fiction made a powerful story. Highly recommended! |
vignettes in a book
| Customer Rating: | | I am still in the middle of the book but so far am not particularly inspired. It is ok but not as wonderful as it was touted to be in all its reviews. Moves slow and has pretty stock characters. Would have liked a bit more depth in each vignette. |
Dan Brown Lite
| Customer Rating: | | Disappointing even for a fluff novel. The Wikipedia article on the Sarajevo Haggadah is a more interesting read. Historical fiction needs either a quality retelling of history or a quality story to get by, and this book offers neither. There's precious little known of the Sarajevo Haggadah's existence, so Brooks imagines a series of events throughout its existence interwoven with a bit of modern-day drama. But she apparently went for the Dan Brown approach by inventing physical details of the book itself, throwing off the balance between history and fiction. The pattern of revealing a detail and immediately following it with a chapter set in the past is too contrived and trite even for mindless beach reading. It's certainly interesting to wonder about this book's journey through the years, but Brooks' imagined history offers little to recommend it. |
Wonderfully Imagined
| Customer Rating: | | This story is so well written. The diverse people involved in the books history and the mysteries of what eventually became of them spark the imagination. I wanted to know more, but really there was no need, it was obvious in most cases. The author was perfect at changing writing styles and placing me in the mini-worlds of these tragic figures. On finishing the book I immediately went on line and looked at pictures of the actual illuminations. It was both intellectually stimulating and a very good read. I look forward to enjoying more from this author. |
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