January 14, 2008
More on Geraldine Brooks and the Sarajevo Haggadah
In advance of Geraldine Brooks’ visit to Atlanta on Tuesday, my hometown paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ran a Q&A with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author as well as a review of her latest novel, “People of the Book.”
This work of fiction emerged from the real-life story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an artifact from the Middle Ages that was hidden from the Nazis by a Muslim scholar. The document also survived the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, this time thanks to another Islamic scholar had the foresight to protect it from Serbian shelling by placing it in an underground bank vault. Brooks spins a tale out of the Haggadah’s history, telling a story from the perspective of a rare-book expert hired to analyze and restore the Jewish artifact after the Bosnian War.
As I mentioned previously on this blog, Brooks wrote a fascinating article in the Dec. 3, 2007 issue of the New Yorker about the real Sarajevo Haggadah, its WWII rescuer, his family and their arrival in Israel in the late 1990s. The New Yorker does not have the full article on its Web site but you can find a pdf copy of the text on Brooks' site.
During the Bosnian War, Brooks spent time in the Balkans as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. The Journal-Constitution’s Kirsten Tagami asked Brooks if she wrote about the Haggadah while she was over there as a journalist. Here is Brooks’ answer:
I didn't because when I was there, nothing was known. Nobody knew where it was. There were all kinds of rumors — that the Muslim government had sold it to buy arms, or that the Mossad had come in and taken it to safety. These kinds of stories were circulating, but nobody really knew until right near the end of the war, when the government sanctioned it being brought out of hiding and displayed at the Jewish community's Passover celebration. Then the story was revealed that the librarian had taken it to safety amid intense shelling in the early days of the war.
In the Journal-Constitution’s review, writer Greg Changnon compared the novel to Brooks’ earlier work:
Brooks, who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for “The March,” the Civil War narrative featuring the father of the March girls from “Little Women,” gives everything she has to the narrative: a half-dozen story lines, a cast of what seems like thousands, and enough twists to fill more than a few novels.
The book is not nearly as good as “The March,” but it doesn't seem meant to be. It's a globetrotting, multi-century potboiler, full of scandal, high drama and nasty, wonderful secrets, not the least of which is the true authorship of the Haggadah. Perhaps there's too much happening here — at times the plot stumbles over itself, crossing dangerously over the line from dazzling to dizzying.
Still, the writing sparkles. Digging deep into her passion, her loneliness and her jaded view of a worn-out world, the narrator's voice seduces a reader with its pluck and daring.
I’ll just say that thus far I’ve been seduced by what I’ve read about this book. I hope to get my hands on a copy soon.
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It is unfortunate that the writer of the above piece about Geraldine Brooks’ book based on the father in Little Women got the title wrong. The correct title is MARCH, not The March. I am unable to make this correction, but I hope someone can do it. It is a shame that the writer got the facts so totally wrong.He/she has done a grave disservice to the author.
You’re correct. The title of the book is “March.”
I have read “People of the Book” and simply had to see the actual masterpiece in real life! The journey was amazing since entire Balkans was a mystery to me and had known little about the Jewish heritage of the region. Inspired by the book, my family and I departed on the most wonderful journey and enjoyed every second of it! The tour was designed by a local agency and now they even have a web site for that tour only: http://www.sarajevohaggadahjourney.com/ We could not, of course, touch the book but the exhibition is exceptional and the curator even showed us the actual book. My eyes watered…
The Journal-Constitution’s review writer, Greg Changnon can’t seem to get anything right. He screwed up the title of Brooks’ novel (March) and seems a bit too critical of what I read (The People of the Book) as a wonderful journey through five centuries of remarkable characters and the tremendous courage that saved this remarkable text from sure destruction. Perhaps Changnon has an attention deficit problem. “The March” was the title of the missive that ‘Brooks thought’ was the winner in 2006 when a friend called to congratulate her. She said her son referred to the award as “The Pulitzer Surprise”.