In 70 A.D., when Roman forces sack Jerusalem, the scribe Abraham flees the city carrying little more than the scroll that documents his family history. For the next 19 centuries, one member of each new generation inherits this scroll along with the admonition that the record must be kept up to date. From Alexandria to Toledo, from Strasbourg to the Warsaw ghetto, Halter provides a moving account of Jews in exile. Abraham's descendants continue to work as scribes and eventually as printers. Since they are loyal to the word, it serves as their defense against oppression and solace in time of pain. This novel, much celebrated in Europe, has been aptly compared to Roots since it is based on records of the Halter family dating back to 1480 and on detailed historical research for the earlier centuries.

More than three thousand years ago, a black child was found on the shore of the Red Sea. She was given the name Zipporah, 'the bird'. But because of the colour of her skin, her fate was sealed: in the tribal lands where she lived, no man would want her as a wife. But one day, as she was drawing water at a well, Zipporah met a man like no other she'd met before. An outcast like herself, his name was Moses and he was a fugitive from Egypt.A passionate lover and a generous wife, Zipporah the Black, the stranger, the non-Jew, was to share Moses' destiny. Thanks to her, he would forget his fears and hear the message of God, bequeathing to mankind laws that, even today, protect the weak against the strong.But alas for Zipporah, her love for Moses would condemn her: for among the Hebrews of the Exodus her status as a black woman was to have catastrophic consequences ...A forgotten protagonist of the Old Testament, Zipporah was the embodiment of intelligence and love. potential of the role given to Moses, her emotional bravery and strength in adversity making her, like Sarah, an astonishing modern heroine: a woman for her - and our - troubled times.