Geraldine Brooks

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Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks had a stellar career as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, but it was her 2005 novel March which won her the Pulitzer Prize.
Sarajevo Haggadah

The Many Faces of Freedom

Velda Shaby

I recently experienced the multi-media performance The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book composed by the Bosnian-born Merima Kljuco, which expressed freedom at so many different levels and with such fervent passion. History was recast through a dialogue of accordion and piano, synchronized with artistic renditions of corresponding historical events. The 12 movements started with the creation of the Haggadah just before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, to Venice in 1609 where Jews were confined to the ghetto, to Sarajevo in 1941 where Hitler’s goal was to establish a “museum of an extinct race” and a Muslim imam hid the book until the war was over, through the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, finally ending with the Mother’s Benediction in Ladino when the Haggadah ends up back home.

Topics: Passover, Music, Theater

Geraldine Brooks’ novel "People of the Book" reviewed in the Chicago Tribune

December 29, 2007

A time-traveling novel that encapsulates a story of many religious people in one historical artifact, People of the Book mixes a modern story with clues from across six centuries to construct a multi-layered and compelling narrative of struggle and redemption.  A modern rare-book conservator traces the tale of the Sarajevo Haggadah, created in 14th century Spain and surviving the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazi occupation, and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  In the course of her historical exploration of persecution mixed with religious tolerance, she makes important discoveries about her own past.

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