An ancient and priceless book, a murky history of evasions and coverups, an underground of sinister and possibly violent dealers, a former spy who drops tantalizing hints and a wily 84-year-old millionaire who says stuff like, \u201cThe problem with this story is that it could damage your health\u201d:\u00a0Are these the ingredients for a cheesy, improbable historical thriller? Yet “The Aleppo Codex,”\u00a0Matti Friedman\u2019s account of his attempts to learn the history of one of the world\u2019s most precious books, sports all of these assets, and it\u2019s nonfiction. If reporting this story damaged Friedman\u2019s health, it probably happened when he realized what he\u2019d stumbled into and his reporter\u2019s heart started beating in doubletime.<\/p>\n[…]\n
Friedman became interested in this \u201clonely treasure and millennium-old traveler\u201d in 2008, when he decided to write an article about it. He imagined the piece would be \u201can uplifting and uncomplicated account of the rescue of a cultural artifact,\u201d but what he discovered instead was a thicket of conflicting reports, missing records, puzzling omissions, stonewalling officials and obsessed amateur sleuths.<\/p>\n
The mysteries surround not the ancient history of the book, but what happened to it between 1947 and the mid-1970s, although even establishing where things got dodgy proved to be a challenge. Friedman relates each piece of the story as he untangled it himself, and part of the pleasure of \u201cThe Aleppo Codex\u201d is getting to tag along on the heels of a real-life investigative journalist as he does his detective work. Those years spent writing wire copy have not eroded the author\u2019s eloquence, either, as the book\u2019s headier touches attest: \u201cDown in those streets, the stores now shuttered, the women of the manzul<\/em> were receiving clients, and the men were submerged in cafe smoke like deep-sea divers, tubes between their lips, inhaling the rose-scented oxygen of water pipes.\u201d<\/p>\n