One hun­dred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a Hun­gar­i­an-born Jew and a New York book­seller, com­mit­ted a crime against his­to­ry. He broke up the world’s great­est book, the Guten­berg Bible, and sold it off in indi­vid­ual pages. This is the sto­ry of an Aus­tralian man’s hunt for those frag­ments and his family’s debt to an act of lit­er­ary van­dal­ism.

In 1921, Wells’s audac­i­ty scan­dal­ized the rare-book world. The Guten­berg was the first sub­stan­tial book in Europe to have been print­ed on a print­ing press. It was the Holy Grail of rare books. Was the break-up a sac­ri­lege or a can­ny deal? New York­ers were divid­ed. But Wells mar­ket­ed the pages as ​‘Noble Frag­ments,’ they sold like hot cakes, and he died a rich man.

Half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, Vison­tay stum­bled upon a mys­te­ri­ous legal doc­u­ment that linked Wells to his own fam­i­ly, allow­ing them a new start in Aus­tralia after the Holo­caust. He became obsessed by the Gutenberg’s invis­i­ble imprint on his life, and set out to track down the pages of the bro­ken bible.