false 92644 16 Following in the footsteps of her breakout debut <i>In the Image</i>, Dara Horn's second novel, <i>The World to Come</i>, is an intoxicating combination of mystery, spirituality, redemption, piety, and passion. Using a real-life art heist as her starting point, Horn traces the life and times of several characters, including Russian-born artist Marc Chagall, the New Jersey-based Ziskind family, and the "already-weres" and "not-yets" who roam an eternal world that exists outside the boundaries of life on earth. <p> At the center of the story is Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy who now spends his days writing questions for a television trivia show. After Ben's twin sister Sara forces him to attend a singles cocktail party at a Jewish museum, Ben spots <i>Over Vitebsk</i>, a Chagall sketch that once hung in the twins' childhood home. Convinced the painting was wrongfully taken from his family, Ben steals the work of art and enlists his twin to create a forgery to replace the stolen Chagall. What follows is a series of interwoven stories that trace the life and times of the famous painting, and the fate of those who come into contact with it. <p> From a Jewish orphanage in 1920s Soviet Russia to a junior high school in Newark, New Jersey, with a stop in the jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam, Horn takes readers on an amazing journey through the sacred and the profane elements of the human condition. It is this expertly rendered juxtaposition of the spiritual with the secular that makes <i>The World to Come</i> so profound, and so compelling to readers. As we learn near the end of the beautiful tale, <i>"The real world to come is down below--the world, in the future, as you create it."</i> <i>--Gisele Toueg</i> 89343 2005 The World to Come: A Novel total:1059|5:307|4:421|3:244|2:70|1:17| 1059 4108 1621 272 5 2 false false Mon Jun 23 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 26 12:38:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 24 07:36:36 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Thu Mar 27 08:26:33 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 22 12:19:41 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Sat Apr 19 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 14 11:45:11 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 20 21:27:03 -0700 2008 History of Love". Better because the texts that bring the characters together are so much richer than the pseudo-Borgesian book-within-a-book in "The History of Love"...more...]]> 5 2 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Sep 07 08:24:08 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 07 08:28:03 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Apr 30 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri May 02 22:18:51 -0700 2008 Fri May 02 22:25:22 -0700 2008 4 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 21 09:41:33 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 12 10:09:57 -0700 2007
My english teacher in high school taught me that everything is a copy of a previous work- you learn an...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 10 09:29:13 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 10 14:01:22 -0800 2008 The World to Come is far and away the best work of fiction I have read in a very, very long time. It is beautifully written, with haunting characters and stories that will stay with me forever. Run, don’t walk, to buy this book - you should own it, not just check it out from the library.

...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Feb 12 13:21:11 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 12 13:21:38 -0800 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 03 13:44:15 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 14:29:32 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 13:16:18 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 19 20:34:46 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 18 08:36:19 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 27 16:08:14 -0700 2007 This was like that, except a lot of the imagery wasn't particularly heart-breaking, the writing wasn't par...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Sep 17 14:04:29 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 26 08:54:50 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:38:19 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:38:19 -0800 2009 Inspired by a true story of a Chagall painting that was stolen from the Jewish Museum in New York in 2001 (which later turned up), The World to Come is at once a mystery, Jewish history and folklore, biography, philosophical treatise, love story, and fantastical adventure. Horn, a scholar of Hebrew ...

more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Apr 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 14:15:57 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 14:40:35 -0700 2009 once is more than enough more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Oct 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 19:19:29 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 19:30:00 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Jul 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 18:34:59 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 21 18:27:44 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Oct 30 12:20:07 -0700 2007 Thu Jan 24 21:03:15 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Oct 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 12 06:15:02 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 24 09:28:06 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Jan 04 20:51:46 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 13:33:11 -0800 2009 5 0 false true Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Nov 09 19:14:05 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 08 11:49:59 -0800 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=92644