Hanna Heath arrives in war-torn Sarajevo and is introduced to museum librarian Ozren Karaman before examining the Haggadah.

While inspecting the Haggadah, Hanna extracts a mysterious white hair and a fragment of an insect wing from the binding.

Hanna and Ozren share dinner in old Sarajevo and begin a brief romantic affair.

Ozren tells Hanna how a sniper killed his wife and left their young son Alia in an irreversible coma.

Museum director Serif Kamal steals the Haggadah from Nazi General Faber to prevent its destruction.

An entomologist in Vienna identifies the insect wing as belonging to an alpine butterfly, suggesting the Haggadah once crossed the Alps.

A crossed-out museum document reveals that the Haggadah once had ornate silver clasps depicting a flower enfolded by a wing.

Syphilitic bookbinder Mittl pays Jewish doctor Hirschfeldt with the stolen silver clasps in exchange for experimental syphilis treatment.

After a car accident, Hanna's hospitalized mother reveals that the woman killed in the crash was Hanna's unknown grandmother.

Sarah Heath confesses that Hanna's father was Aaron Sharansky, a celebrated Jewish painter who died from a brain tumor.

Hanna visits the Tate Gallery in London, sees her father's paintings for the first time, and breaks down crying.

Hanna receives word that Alia has died from a fever and brain infection.

Returning to Sarajevo for the Haggadah exhibition, Hanna realizes the displayed manuscript is a near-perfect forgery.

Elderly Lola, working as a museum janitor in Jerusalem, discovers the original Haggadah sitting on a library shelf.

Hanna smuggles the original Haggadah back into Sarajevo and finds Zahra's name secretly inscribed as the manuscript's illustrator.

Book conservator Hanna Heath arrives in war-torn Sarajevo to examine the famous Sarajevo Haggadah, where she meets librarian Ozren Karaman and begins uncovering the manuscript's hidden history through physical clues. Her investigation leads her across Europe, tracing the Haggadah's missing clasps, identifying an unusual insect wing, and uncovering how the Muslim Kamal family sheltered the book from Nazi destruction. Alongside her professional work, Hanna's personal life fractures open when her mother's car accident forces a long-buried family secret into the light — revealing Hanna's true father and Jewish heritage. Returning to Sarajevo for the Haggadah's exhibition, Hanna makes a devastating discovery: the manuscript on display is a forgery, and the original has been secretly stolen. The trail leads to Jerusalem, where the original is recovered, and finally back to Sarajevo, where the Haggadah is restored and the identity of its long-anonymous illustrator is revealed for the first time.

The headline journey of the Haggadah and Hanna's investigation.

Hanna tells Ozren that restoring a book to its original state would erase its history and dishonor its past.

Nazi soldiers seize Lola's father from the family home in Sarajevo and send him to a labor camp.

Lola finds her mother and sister sheltering in a local synagogue but is forced to flee without them.

Lola escapes Nazi-occupied Sarajevo and joins a Partisan resistance group co-led by Isak.

Serif hides the Haggadah in his family's mountain library, tucked between volumes of Islamic law.

Bookbinder Mittl, delirious with late-stage syphilis, steals the Haggadah's ornate silver clasps while it is in his care.

Wealthy Venetian Jew Dona Reyna asks Rabbi Aryeh to have the Haggadah approved by the Inquisition censor so she can leave the city.

Rabbi Aryeh disguises himself during Carnivale to hide his Jewish identity and gambles away the money meant for his congregation.

Censor Vistorini drunkenly spills wine and cuts himself on a shattered glass, staining the Haggadah's pages with wine and blood.

Jewish scribe David Ben Shoushan buys striking illuminations from a deaf-mute orphan boy in the Tarragona marketplace.

David Ben Shoushan is killed by Inquisition guards after refusing to reveal the whereabouts of his daughter Ruti.

Ruti Ben Shoushan rescues the Haggadah from her bookbinder lover and flees Tarragona carrying her newborn nephew.

Zahra, enslaved after her father's murder on a journey, is sold to a Seville painter and later transferred to the palace to paint the emira.

Werner Heinrich and Ozren examine each page of the displayed manuscript but insist to Hanna they see no signs of forgery.

Amitai explains to Hanna that Werner Heinrich, fearing another Bosnian war, created the fake and had the original secretly moved to Israel.

This pool follows the secondary characters and historical episodes that the Haggadah's physical clues unlock, tracing the manuscript's survival through the hands of ordinary people across generations of persecution. In World War II Sarajevo, a young Jewish woman named Lola escapes the Nazi invasion but loses her family, eventually finding shelter with the Muslim Kamal family who hide the Haggadah in a remote mountain library. The novel then moves backward through time, showing the bookbinder Mittl stealing the Haggadah's clasps in imperial Vienna, Rabbi Aryeh gambling away money meant for his congregation in Carnivale-era Venice, and Jewish scribe David Ben Shoushan being killed by Inquisition guards in medieval Spain. In the earliest revealed story, a North African slave named Zahra is transported to Seville, where her artistic skills eventually bring her before the emira. Back in the present, Hanna's mentor Werner Heinrich and Ozren conspire to deny her findings before the full truth of the theft is finally confessed.

The hidden hands that shaped the Haggadah's survival across centuries.

Hanna insists Ozren seek a second opinion on his comatose son's brain scans, triggering a bitter argument that ends their affair.

Partisan leader Isak drowns himself and his dying sister Ina in a frozen river, leaving Lola completely alone.

Lola returns to Sarajevo under a false name and is sheltered by the Muslim Kamal family who ask nothing in return.

Heinrich tells Hanna that Serif Kamal, despite saving Jewish lives, was later jailed by Communists as a supposed Nazi collaborator.

Dr. Hirschfeldt breaks from professional detachment and allows himself full human empathy for his suffering antisemitic patient Mittl.

A lab scan of the Haggadah's wine stains reveals two separate samples on the same page: kosher wine and human blood.

Rabbi Aryeh cheats at a game of chance to win back the Haggadah, but the enraged Vistorini seizes the book and dismisses him.

Drunk and alone with the Haggadah, Vistorini recovers suppressed childhood memories of his Jewish parents being taken away, then writes his Catholic name in the book.

Hanna attends shiva at her father's family home in Brookline, mourning a grandmother and a Jewish heritage she was never allowed to know.

Ruti secretly performs a Jewish ritual immersion on her newborn gentile nephew, defiantly converting him as Jews are expelled from Spain.

Zahra refuses to paint the emira Nura naked, drawing on her own trauma of violation, and the two women become secret lovers.

Zahra creates a series of illuminated paintings of Jewish stories to help the deaf-mute boy Benjamin ha-Levi understand his own faith.

After Ozren and Werner deny seeing any forgery, Hanna storms out in fury and leaves the stolen Haggadah unreported.

Hanna takes her father's surname Sharansky, cuts her hair, and permanently severs her relationship with her mother.

Ozren confesses his regret to Hanna and uses his museum credentials to secretly replace the forgery with the original Haggadah.

This pool focuses on the pivotal moments of choice, revelation, and moral reckoning that drive the novel's emotional core. In the present-day storyline, Hanna's push for a second opinion on Alia's condition fractures her affair with Ozren, while the discovery of human blood in the Haggadah's wine stains deepens the manuscript's mystery and her mother's car accident shatters a lifetime of hidden family history. The historical narratives are equally shaped by turning points: Isak's sacrifice leaves Lola utterly alone, Vistorini's drunken encounter with the Haggadah unlocks a suppressed Jewish identity he cannot face, and Ruti's defiant ritual immersion transforms a gentile baby into a Jew on the very night Jews are exiled from Spain. In the earliest story, Zahra's refusal to degrade her mistress forges an unexpected bond, and her decision to create illuminations for a deaf child gives the Haggadah its iconic images. The novel closes with Hanna's own turning point — severing her mother's name and, alongside a remorseful Ozren, restoring the Haggadah to its rightful home.

The decisions, discoveries, and emotional reckonings that reshape every character.