ACCORDING to the Koran, the 'People of the Book' are the non-Muslims who received the word of God before the time of Prophet Muhammad - namely Jews and Christians.

Despite, or perhaps because of, their common roots, relationships among the three groups through history have been marked by strife.

But in her new novel People Of The Book, Australian journalist-turned-novelist Geraldine Brooks (above) has woven an epic tale of individuals who, driven by circumstance or conscience, created and preserved what is now known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, an actual 15th-century Hebrew manuscript.

A Haggadah is a special book Jews use at Passover to tell the story of the Exodus, and this one is exquisitely illustrated even though it was made at a time when Jewish belief was against creating images.

The narrative begins in 1996, right after the Bosnian war. While the city lies in ruins, a miracle has happened: The Haggadah, feared destroyed, has turned up in a bank vault, rescued under heavy shelling by a Muslim librarian.

The job of examining the book and writing an essay for a special exhibition falls to rare book conserver Hanna Heath. The 30-year-old Australian has landed the plum job partly due to her expertise, but primarily because her citizenship is seen as non-threatening to all parties - another nod to the supremacy of divisions.

As Hanna pores over the ancient manuscript, she finds tiny clues as to its history littering its pages - an insect wing, wine stains, saltwater marks and a fine white hair. With the help of colleagues, she seeks out the stories behind the book, wanting 'to give a sense of the people of the book, the different hands that had made it, used it, protected it'.

She also has to deal with her own past. A sexual dalliance with the heroic librarian has compelled her to try to find a cure for his dying son, made a vegetable by a sniper's bullet. She resorts to approaching her estranged neurosurgeon mother, an expert in brains but not so much in hearts. Skeletons in closets are given an airing.

Though what Hanna can draw from the clues is enigmatic, the reader is left less frustrated. Alternating with Hanna's story is the book's, as Brooks takes us on a journey back to its beginnings.

Starting with the rescue of the book by another Muslim librarian during World War II, we go back to its manhandling in anti-Semitic 19th-century Vienna, its rescue from burning by a Catholic priest during the 17th-century Spanish inquisition in Venice, and the creation of its calligraphy and illustrations in 15th-century Barcelona and Seville.

Brooks avoids painting simplistic pictures of cooperation and do-gooding. Yes, there are moments of compassion, but there is also shame, greed and cowardice - human qualities which endear the characters to the reader even as they highlight the struggle between Man's nature and his ideals.

A former reporter for The Wall Street Journal who covered the Bosnian war, Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006 for her previous novel March, which follows the father of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women through the American Civil War. In journalistic fashion, she savours eye-opening details, such as in the step-by-step description of Hanna's conservation of the book.

But at times, she loses control of her plot: Hanna's obligatory romance with the librarian is never entirely convincing nor compelling, while the twist at the end is rather improbable. Fortunately, these merely bog down, rather than ruin, the narrative.

In imagining this story about the Haggadah, Brooks has managed to look beyond the broad brush strokes of religion relations and into the minds of the individuals who transcend these chasms to touch one another, preserving a work of art and, in the process, creating hope.

If you like this, read: Possession by A.S. Byatt (1990, $20.28 with GST, Books Kinokuniya)

The romance between two present- day academics parallels the romance between the two Victorian poets they are researching.