Based on a true story, but fleshed out with fictional characters, this book is complex and intriguing. The protagonist is Australian, as is the author. I liked the Australian tidbits along the way.

That the Sarajevo Haggadah, an early illuminated Jewish religious volume, survived is a testament to people of all faiths who risked their lives to keep it safe.

Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, makes this story come to life through vivid glimpses of history. I was glad to see that she ties up one story after leaving it hanging in an earlier chapter, the story of a young Jewish girl who survives the Holocaust.

Brooks manages to get an enormous amount of information across without being didactic.

There are some rough moments in history in this book, such as horrific torture during the time of the Inquisition to make those sections hard to read and enough anti-Semitism depicted through the ages to make the survival of the text nothing short of miraculous. She has a section in the back in which she explains how she researched that is also educational.

This is a book I would like to read a second time. I give it a 4.

Have you read it — or any of her other books? This is the first book of hers that I’ve read, but I look forward to reading more of her work.

Karin

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