Absolutely sublime. The book of the title refers to the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated Passover haggadah which is believed to date back to the period of the Inquisition in Spain, and has had various owners over the centuries. It is now in the museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
The author has created a fictionalized account of the haggadah's journey through Europe, but incorporates some real life individuals under different names, along with her totally imagined characters as the backstory. The central (completely fictional) character is an Australian, Dr. Hannah Heath, a rare book expert and conservator, who is hired to make repairs to the haggadah to stabilize, rather than restore it.
Hannah's painstaking work becomes a high-level detective story with elements of family strife, romance, history, the modern art world and international politics. The artistic and scientific aspects of Hannah's efforts offer clues to the haggadah's origin and its various owners. We follow its movements through the Inquisition in Spain, to the Jewish ghetto of Venice in the early 17th century, Hapsburg Vienna of the 1890s, the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, the Bosnian War of the 1990s, and eventually to the present, with side visits to Israel, Australia and Boston.
A great read, fascinating and satisfying! I am totally ready for the movie or Netflix series version, should there be one.
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