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sanela, September 4, 2008

Rating is 4.5
This is a book about the creation and journey of another book. This is going to be any bookworm favourite. Sarajevo Haggadah. In Jewish tradition hagaddah tells the story of the exodus of Jews from Egypt and it is traditionally read at Passover.
Geraldine Brooks has attempted to paint the beginning and the journey of this magical little volume that is today on display in Zemaljski Muzej in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Through the story’s beginning with the last amazing escape from the last war (Bosnian) flames intertwined with the stories of the people who have been around it: protecting it, conserving, analyzing it, etc.. going back in time she tells the story of the book and people who have possessed it, or were in her presence… to the end where she fictionalizes the long lost past of how book came to be.
She is attempting to answer two difficult questions:
1. Path of the book from its creation to the Sarajevo Museum;
2. Why is this the only known hagaddah in the world with human figures present in its illuminations? In Jewish like in Islamic tradition it is forbidden to make drawings, illustrations, etc of the God and generally they have used other decorative elements, but not human form. Thus, researchers have been puzzled since this book surfaced in Sarajevo in late 1800s at why would someone make a practically picture book of the exodus (the first pages are illustrative of the first days of God’s creation).
I have enjoyed fictionalization of both very much.
1. The book’s journey is both painful and wonderful, as have been people who have carrying it, who have been on their own journey. Story of the journey is both plausible and imaginative. It is not hard to imagine that it could have been like that (if one has any even basic idea of history of European Jewry and Europe). The part of life in Bosnia is based on interviews of people involved in saving of the book. Everything going back in history is based on traces of human interaction with the book and fictionalized…
2. Fictionalization of why this hagaddah ended up as a picture book, illustrated and illuminated, against the grain of what is commonly done in Jewish community is not as plausible, but however I loved the way author imagined creation of the book: it came to be very different as main characters involved in the creation of the book were different in their own communities and then under heartrending circumstances these outcasts from different religious communities came to point of the nexus, point of contact and out of it this beautiful little book is created. Something new, not done before always come to be in that kind of scenario.
This is easy read; for me this book is “Jewish ‘Da Vinci Code’”
It is not greatest piece of literary art, main female character is OK, but that part of the story is sloppy. Her role is to introduce us to different points of books journey, but her own journey could have been better developed. It may be a bit hollywoody ending… Talking about Hollywood, I book would make for a great movie, and I bet we will see it on the big screens… In that regard, it is great book that has brought out of the shadows a tiny modest looking book that has kept so many secrets and thought us so much…

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