People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (2008)

I don't think I will ever tire of reading good novels about books. Here's another. The main story that ties all the other together is about Hanna, a rare book preservationist, who gets the opportunity to examine and stabilize a 500 year old book, a Jewish Haggadah in Sarajeva. She finds small anomalies and things in the book that lead us to stories about the books travels over the years and through southern Europe. Each story is a heart wrenching one of the Jewish plight over the centuries.

The butterfly wing led to the story of how the book was saved during World War II and the harrowing destruction of the Jews by the Nazis. It also gives us a glimpse of Tito in his youth.

Each of these flash-backs into history not only tells the immediate story of the book itself, but gives a broad brush illustration of numerous people's lives - their lives, sorrows, families, lovers, castes, religious groups, which all end up affecting the fate of the book. For a while I couldn't understand what a doctor in Vienna in 1894, who discreetly treated STD's, had to do with the Haggedah. It turns out one of his patients was the one to rebind the Haggedah, and his illness influenced how he did that.

The wine stain leads to a priest, who worked as one of the main censors in Venice of 1609.

The minuscule crystals of sea salt lead to the story of the books creation in Spain of 1492, during the times of the Spanish inquisition and when all Jews were expelled from Spain.

The hair leads to the story of the creation of the illustrations, another very interesting peek into the history of Spain. May be another topic worth exploring. I now I've been fascinated by the story of the Moors in Spain, but I didn't realize what an interesting combination of Christians, Muslim and Jews have created Spanish history. One of the quotes I liked in this book was that the Christians made war, the Muslims build buildings and the Jews raised the funds. I still don't understand how Spain got to be such a huge empire. (Some of the other books I have read about Spain: The Spanish Bow, Zorro, Constant Princess (Katharine of Aragon was from Spain), and I am sure there are others.)

Some parts were hard to listen to - the torture, the killing, exile, etc. But then I had a sense of being privileged to get a glimpse of "what really happened" to the book, while the main character Hanna, just had a crumb of that history - the book had been in such and such a place because that is where this type of butterfly lives. I plan on buying this book for friends.