By Sean Leviashvili
Geraldine Brooks knew she wanted to be a journalist when she encountered firsthand the meaning of the phrase “hot off the press” as a young girl in Sydney, Australia. But becoming a novelist – a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, nonetheless – happened more on a whim.
The author spoke to a crowd of about 70 during a presentation Tuesday in Snell Library. Her speech and discussion session was the latest in Snell’s “Meet the Author” series.
Brooks’ father was a proofreader for a newspaper and sometimes brought her to work with him. She said she still remembers feeling the building shake as deadline approached and touching the hot pages of the day’s newspaper minutes before it was shipped throughout the city.
Her father was a human rights advocate as well, always defending the underdog, Brooks said. Her mother nurtured and encouraged her imagination. Her whole family had a profound appreciation for books, she said.
“For us,” Brooks said, “books were in a special class of things, like food and school uniforms – something we somehow found money for.”
Brooks’ love of books surfaced before she was 10 years old when she discovered “The Adventure Series” by British author Enid Blyton. Initially, she purchased one of the books from the collection, but after posting a request in the classified ads section, she eventually owned all seven.
When her collection was complete, Brooks said she laid the books on her living room floor to admire them. She said she still remembers the sensation that arose in her.
“I never had this feeling before, and I didn’t have a word for it. I was nine,” Brooks said. “It was six years before I had that feeling again, and by then I had a word – it was lust.”
Brooks said the combined passion she has had throughout her life for international affairs and literature has led her to a career rich with excitement, culture and a further understanding of humanity. As a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Brooks found the source of her most recent novel, “People of the Book,” in Sarajevo, Bosnia while reporting on the country’s civil war.
“The idea [for the novel] came from something I heard in a bar,” Brooks said, “something I heard in a bar in a war zone.”
“People of the Book” explores a Jewish manuscript titled the Haggadah. The Haggadah has its own history. The text can be traced back to medieval Spain through the Spanish influenced art featured in its pages, Brooks said.
While working on “People of the Book,” Brooks gained insight into the Haggadah’s past while working with Andrea Pataki starting in 2001. As part of an investigation for the United Nations, Pataki, a book conservator, analyzed the fibers, pigment and other details to help piece together the Haggadah’s history.
As one of the few Jewish manuscripts of the medieval times to be eloquently illustrated, the Haggadah has a fascinating past, Brooks said. It was rescued and saved from enemies throughout its existence, which experts predict could be as early as the 14th century.
In 1609, it was rescued by a priest in Venice as a favor for Rabbi Leon Demodino, a leader notorious in the community for his sermons. More than 300 years later, in 1941, Dervis Korkut, a renowned Islamic scholar, denied Nazi requests to claim ownership of the Hebrew codex and safeguarded the text by temporarily keeping it in a mosque in the Alps.
And most recently, during the civil war in Bosnia, Enver Imamovic, a Muslim librarian, approached police with the idea of transporting the Haggadah to a safer location. Along with five officers, Imamovic relocated the holy manuscript from the Bosnian National Museum to a maximum security bank further away from Sarajevo.
“‘People of the Book’ takes us on a journey,” said Luis Teller, a sophomore who collaborated with International Students Scholar Academy (ISSI) to organize the event. “I only started the book. I finished the first section and already I’ve learned wonders about Geraldine Brooks.”
Andres Alarcon, a sophomore international business major, said he appreciated Brooks’ talk.
“I really enjoyed the culture she brought with her,” he said. “I didn’t know too much about Balkan history, and hadn’t ever thought of turning it into something.”
Brooks spent her early career as a foreign correspondent, but after giving birth to her son, Nathaniel, now 11 years old, she said she felt the lifestyle could not balance with the needs of a child, so she began focusing her career on writing novels and non-fiction work.
In 2006, Brooks received the Pulitzer Prize for her fiction novel, “March.” Other works of hers include “Nine Parts of Desire,” “Foreign Correspondence” and “Years of Wonder.”
Each of her works, whether fiction or non-fiction, explores a different point of history or culture, revealing the voice of someone previously unheard. Through her exploration into places most people only see on CNN, and through her own personal experiences, Brooks said she developed a sense of what strings different cultures together and makes each one equally human.
“I think if anyone tries to tell you that some group of people is not like us, they’re always wrong,” Brooks said. “At essence, everybody has the same ambition – to live and see their kids live. If nothing else in common, we’ve got that, and that’s a place to start.”
