This title was our book club's choice for October, and it didn't disappoint. GB is one of the most gifted novelists who is writing today. The book is actually two intertwined stories: the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated manuscript depicting the story of the Hebrews' escape from Egypt and used during a home service of the holiday of Passover. The other story is the efforts of a conservationist to trace the ownership of the Haggadah through the ages, while sorting out her own young life, including difficulties with an unloving mother and her comlicated feelings towards the Bosnian librarian who kept the manuscript safe during the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Many members in the book club remarked that the book was an eye-opener for them--they didn't realize how difficult it was to live as a Jew through the ages.
