The story focuses on imagined events surrounding the protagonist and real historical past of the still-extant Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest surviving Jewish illuminated texts.

[1] The novel tells the fictional story of Dr. Hanna Heath, an Australian book conservator who comes to Sarajevo to restore the Haggadah.

In the course of the restoration she takes microscopic samples: fragments of a butterfly's wing caught in the spine, a long white cat hair tangled in the binding, traces of salt crystals, a wine stain mixed with blood.

Geraldine Brooks wrote an article for The New Yorker that provides more details about the Sarajevo Haggadah and its real-life rescuers, especially Dervis Korkut, who hid it from the Nazis.

It also explains that Lola, the young Jewish guerrilla fighter in the novel, is based on a real person named Mira Papo, who was sheltered by Dervis Korkut and his wife Servet.