Synopses & Reviews
A million-dollar painting by Marc Chagall is stolen from a museum. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a thirty-year-old quiz-show writer. As Benjamin and his twin sister try to evade the police, they find themselves recalling their dead parents the father who lost a leg in Vietnam, the mother who created children's books and their stories about trust, loss, and betrayal. What is true, what is fake, what does it mean? Eighty years before the theft, these questions haunted Chagall and the enigmatic Yiddish fabulist Der Nister (
The Hidden One), teachers at a school for Jewish orphans. Both the painting and the questions will travel through time to shape the Ziskinds' futures.
With astonishing grace and simplicity, Dara Horn interweaves a real art heist, history, biography, theology, and Yiddish literature. Richly satisfying, utterly unique, her novel opens the door to the world to come not life after death, but the world we create through our actions right now.
Review
"A compelling collage of history, mystery, theology, and scripture, The World to Come is a narrative tour de force crackling with conundrums and dark truths." Allison Block, Booklist (starred review)
Review
"Compelling and luxuriously layered... an accomplished work that beautifully explains how families in all their maddening, smothering, supportive glory create us." Natalie Danford, LA Times Sunday Book Review