The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman
First line: “In the summer of 2008, in a dark underground room at Israel’s national museum in Jerusalem, I encountered one of the most important books on earth.” This may look like a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, but in reality it’s something far more exciting. Both an ode to the power of books and a literary mystery story, Friedman investigates the turbulent past of one of the most important books in Israeli history, the copy of the Hebrew Bible known the Aleppo Codex. Not only was the codex smuggled across national borders in a conspiracy that reached to the highest levels, but 200 pages also went missing en route. Friedman plays detective as best he can, but the story is thrilling enough in itself, a real-life National Treasure that reads like fantastical fiction. The blurb from Jonathan Safran Foer says it all – this is history retold as a literary thriller. Published by Algonquin Books on May 15th, 2012.