Geraldine brooks books in order

Interview

In two separate interviews, Geraldine Brooks discusses Year of Wonders and People of the Book, and the difficulties of writing stories that blend fiction with historical fact, given her journalistic - just-the-facts background.

Two interviews with Geraldine Brooks about Year of Wonders and People of the Book.

A Conversation with Geraldine Brooks about People of the Book

Your previous two novels are set during Europe's plague years and the American Civil War. Now, you've created an epic story about art and religious persecution. What is it that draws you to a particular subject, or a particular historical era?

I love to find stories from the past where we can know something, but not everything; where there is enough of a historical record to have left us with an intriguing factual scaffolding, but where there are also enough unknowable voids in that record to allow room for imagination to work.


What do you think it is about the real Sarajevo Haggadah that has allowed it to survive the centuries?

It's a fascinating question: Why did this little book always find its protectors when so many others did not? It is interesting to me that the book was created in a period—convivencia Spain—when diversity was tolerated, even somewhat celebrated, and that it found its way centuries later to a similar place, Sarajevo. So even when hateful forces arose in those societies and crushed the spirit of multiethnic, ...

Full Interview

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