People of the Book

Hanna is a trained book conservator and the woman hired to restore and examine the famous Sarajevo Haggadah. She is a confident woman in her work, but she struggles with chronic self-doubt from her relationship with her mother, Sarah, a famous neurosurgeon who questions her daughter’s choices. Hanna is a little sarcastic, a little emotionally distant, and deeply loyal to her work and the people she loves. She has a crisis of identity while investigating the Haggadah, when she learns the identity of her father, the famous painter Aaron Sharansky. Ultimately, Hanna comes into her own, taking on her father’s name and distancing herself from her mother. She changes her name at the end of the book to Hanna Sharansky, and is vindicated when she learns that the Haggadah that she thought was a forgery was, in fact, stolen and replaced with a near-perfect fake. 

Sarah is a skilled neurosurgeon at the top of her field. She is also deeply critical of her daughter, Hanna, and generally standoffish and secretive. Sarah believes that the reason she behaves the way she does is because she had to fight to advance in her career, arguing that she is a feminist warrior who is paving the way for nurses and female doctors who deserve to be treated with respect.