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Geraldine Brooks: Sarajevo Haggadah
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Crossing time and cultures, Geraldine Brooks takes the reader through the life of a very special book, the Sarajevo Haggadah. Her writing is crisp and embroidered with multi-layered mystery that engages the reader through the survival of a unique and beautiful manuscript. Her characters' vividly imagined lives are often studies in courage as Brooks brings watershed periods of local and Jewish history to light with deep respect and sensitivity. The book is well-researched with sufficient detail to enlighten without slowing a quick-paced read. Fortunately Ms. Brooks, a WSJ reporter assigned to the Bosnian War of the 1990's, didn't succumb to the standard media prejudice: 'They're tribal people who have been killing each other for thousands of years. They'll never stop.' This reporter saw human qualities beyond ethnic stereotyping and prejudice during her time in Sarajevo.
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International bestselling author Geraldine Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for her novel MARCH, which retells Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN from the perspective of the family patriarch, who is off fighting in the American Civil War. Her latest work of fiction, PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, spans 500 years and revolves around a different sort of text --- an extremely rare illuminated Jewish manuscript that has managed to survive near-destruction time and time again during some of the most tumultuous periods in world history. In this interview, Brooks describes what fascinated and inspired her about the real-life tome --- the Sarajevo Haggadah --- and discusses the amount of research she performed to accurately portray both the historical periods and the scientific process of book restoration. She ... explains how she shaped the voice of the book's narrator, speculates on its reception in Bosnia and reveals how her "Pulitzer Surprise" has affected her work ethic.
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March, Geraldine Brooks's second novel, won her the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. People of the Book, her third novel, seems headed for comparable acclaim. Its plot revolves ever so gracefully around the true story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a 14th-century Sephardic holy book that somehow survived centuries of hatred and destruction. Into this real-life epic tale of heroism and chance, Brooks has skillfully woven a historical fiction of uncanny force. In her hands, this improbable, even wondrous story of one document's survival becomes both a timely meditation on faiths in conflict and a tense historical thriller. Superb storytelling; a literary masterpiece tinged with the excitement of rediscovery.
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Booksellers are singing the praises of Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book, and customers are listening. The new novel, whose historical backbone is drawing comparisons to The Da Vinci Code, has climbed to No. 17 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, up from No. 55 last week. The novel focuses, in part, on the 600-year history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a priceless medieval Hebrew text, which retells the story of Exodus. Brooks' Pulitzer Prize-winning March (2005) and Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague (2001) did not enter the top 150 until their paperback release. "It's all good," said Brooks, when asked how having a best seller compares with winning a Pulitzer. "I've always felt incredibly lucky with my fiction writing and finding readers."
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Brooks learned the book had been rescued in similar fashion from Nazis in World War II. She went back to Sarajevo and learned by chance that the widow of the real librarian who saved the book from the Nazis some 50 years earlier was still alive. She had a story.
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This month, Ms. Brooks is on the road explaining why the Sarajevo Haggadah is so significant. She gives a little taste of that pitch when she goes upstairs to show off two replicas.
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Sarajevo Haggadah