People of the Book

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Brooks, Geraldine	4-week checkout	Due 05-13-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Brooks, Geraldine	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

people of the book submitted by hcf on August 2, 2014, 4:30pm i found this novel by brooks to be okay...not her strongest (and i LOVE her other stuff)

Riveting submitted by Zekicmom on June 18, 2016, 9:51pm I enjoyed this book. I admit to having some connections to some of the locations and themes which may be influencing my opinion, but I found it really interesting. I just wished it were a true story because I really want to know the back story of the Sarajevo Haggadah!

Fun read (plus I learned a lot)! submitted by jaromatorio on July 24, 2020, 11:41am I generally really enjoy books that span large swathes of time and place, and ‘People of the Book’ was no exception! ‘People of the Book’ is the fictionalized account of the travels (and many tribulations) of the Sarajevo Haggadah-one of the oldest surviving illuminated Jewish texts. This book has, IRL, survived MANY close brushes with fate-this novel just adds some artfully imagined details to what is already a pretty remarkable true story.

This novel flips back and forth between the present, where book restoration expert Hanna Heath is working diligently to restore the damaged text, and the past, where the Haggadah travels (over the span of about 500 years) from Seville to inquisition-era Venice to WWII ravished Bosnia with a half dozen stops in-between.
The history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, both real and imagined, is really incredible, and I thought the author did a fantastic job of giving the reader a sense of place and time, and of the immense sacrifices it took to preserve this seminal text. Though some of the personal stories felt a bit cliched at times, overall I think this fictionalization of the Haggadah’s dangerous journey was quite well done, and I definitely learned a ton while reading it!!

Unexpectedly delightful submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 12, 2021, 9:26pm It’s been a good year for good books. This fictionalized version of what might have been the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah was utterly engrossing. Each journey into the book’s possible past drew me into real history, imaginary characters, and how archaeology works in ways that I did not expect. Unexpectedly delightful.

Very Good submitted by emroon on July 15, 2022, 3:49pm This was much a fun premise for a book and I loved piecing together all the parts of the story. I learned a lot about other cultures and time periods.