People of the Book: A Novel Audiobook (Free)

Look at our feature on Geraldine Books’s People of the Book.

From your Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, the journey of the rare illuminated manuscript through centuries of exile and war

In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the work of a lifetime: evaluation and conservation from the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling through the Bosnian battle. Priceless and gorgeous, the book is among the first Jewish amounts ever to become illuminated about People of the Reserve: A Novel with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion on her behalf work, discovers a series of small artifacts in its ancient binding-an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair-she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries. The audience is normally ushered into an exquisitely comprehensive and atmospheric past, tracing the book’s journey from its salvation back again to its creation.

In Bosnia during World War II, a Muslim risks his existence to protect it in the Nazis. In the hedonistic salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the reserve becomes a pawn in the struggle against the city’s increasing anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest will save it from burning. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who had written the text views his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the Haggadah’s amazing illuminations is finally disclosed. Hanna’s investigation unexpectedly plunges her in to the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fans. Her experiences will test her perception in herself and the man she has arrive to love.

Inspired by a true story, Folks of the Publication reaches once a book of sweeping historic grandeur and close emotional strength, an ambitious, electrifying function by an acclaimed and beloved writer.