A very old and beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript--a Haggadah used for Passover Seders. Inside the binding and book are found an insect-wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals and a white hair. I 
thought Geraldine Brooks' The People of the Book was wonderful. The novel traces the provenance of a Hebrew book from its inception in 15th century Spain to present day Sarajevo.
Brooks took her inspiration from actual events, though she stresses that the novel is fictional and the characters are entirely imagined. It is true that a Hebrew codex was rescued from the Bosnian National Museum by a Muslim librarian during shelling in the early 1990s. It's location was unknown until much later, but it had been safely kept in a bank vault. Earlier, in the 1940s it had been saved yet again by an Islamic scholar who placed it in a mosque in the mountains, away from looting Nazis. In her afterword, Brooks writes this about the actual book:
"The haggadah first came to the attention of scholars in Sarajevo in 1894, when an indigent Jewish family offered it for sale. Art historians were excited by its discovery because it was one of the earliest illuminated medieval books to come to light. Its discovery called into question the belief that figurative art had been suppressed among medieval Jews for religious reasons. Unfortunately, scholars were not able to learn much of the book's creation other than that it was made in Spain, possibly as early as the mid-fourteenth century, toward the close of the period known as the Convivencia, when Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted in relative peace."
Brooks forms her novel around these facts. Hanna Heath, a rare book expert from Australia, comes to Sarajevo to analyze and conserve a Hebrew manuscript.
"I can't say exactly the extent of my work till I've thoroughly inspected the manuscript, but here's the thing: no one hires me looking for chemical cleanups or heavy restorations. I've written too many papers knocking that approach. To restore a book to the way it was when it was made is to lack respect for its history. I think you have to accept a book as you receive it from past generations, and to a certain extent damage and wear reflect that history. The way I see it, my job is to make it stable enough to allow safe handling and study, repairing only where absolutely necessary. This, here" I said, pointing to a page where a russet stain bloomed over the fiery Hebrew calligraphy, "I can take a microscopic sample of those fibers, and we can analyze them, and maybe learn what made that stain--wine would be my first guess. But a full analysis might provide clues as to where the book was at the time it happened And if we can't tell now, then in fifty, a hundred years, when lab techniques have advanced, my counterpart in the future will be able to do so. But if I chemically erase that stain--that so-called damage--we'd lose the chance at that knowledge forever."
The story flips back and forth between Hanna in the present day as she tries to unlock the secrets the manuscript holds and theorizes on what they mean, and further and further into the past. The chapters alternate and with each chapter we discover what actually happened to the manuscript--the hands it passed through to those who created it. It's all very creatively presented, and it seems that Brooks has certainly done her research well. Oftentimes in novels like these one period or plotline will dominate the other, but I was quite content with both the story set in the present and the individual pieces of the story in the past. I found it all interesting--not ever wishing I could hurry on to a more exciting part of the story.
Even though this story was by and large imagined, what I appreciated most is the idea of different cultures and religions coexisting peacefully (at least during parts of the book) and having enough respect to ensure the safety of a beautiful and holy object despite times of war and unrest.