A Guide for the Perplexed: A Novel - Hardcover

Horn, Dara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393064891 ISBN 13: 9780393064896

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Synopsis

The incomparable Dara Horn returns with a spellbinding novel of how technology changes memory and how memory shapes the soul.

Software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi has invented an application that records everything its users do. When an Egyptian library invites her to visit as a consultant, her jealous sister Judith persuades her to go. But in Egypt’s postrevolutionary chaos, Josie is abducted―leaving Judith free to take over Josie’s life at home, including her husband and daughter, while Josie’s talent for preserving memories becomes a surprising test of her empathy and her only means of escape.

A century earlier, another traveler arrives in Egypt: Solomon Schechter, a Cambridge professor hunting for a medieval archive hidden in a Cairo synagogue. Both he and Josie are haunted by the work of the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, a doctor and rationalist who sought to reconcile faith and science, destiny and free will. But what Schechter finds, as he tracks down the remnants of a thousand-year-old community’s once-vibrant life, will reveal the power and perils of what Josie’s ingenious work brings into being: a world where nothing is ever forgotten.

An engrossing adventure that intertwines stories from Genesis, medieval philosophy, and the digital frontier, A Guide for the Perplexed is a novel of profound inner meaning and astonishing imagination.

About this title

About the Author:

Dara Horn is a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and one of Granta’s Best American Novelists. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.

Review:

“Readers will be taken in by this literary thriller’s fast-paced plot and complicated but well-imaged characters. A sure bet.”
- Library Journal

“[An] intense, multilayered story... Horn's writing comes from a place of deep knowledge...”
- Jami Attenberg, New York Times Book Review

“It’s not every day you come across a genuinely page-turning kidnapping story that is also replete with historical, psychological, and interpretive insights into Maimonides, envy, and motherhood, not to mention replicating the narrative structure and central themes of the biblical story of Joseph. A Guide for the Perplexed is Dara Horn’s most ambitious, audacious, edifying, and entertaining novel yet.”
- Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“[A Guide for the Perplexed] is so beautiful, so mystical, so exciting... I really urge you to read Dara Horn.”
- Bill Goldstein, NBC's Weekend Today Show

“Dara Horn's fourth, and best.... [A] humane, erudite novel.”
- Boston Globe

“Horn moves seamlessly back and forth in time.”
- Entertainment Weekly

“Intricate and suspenseful, A Guide for the Perplexed is both learned and heartfelt, an exploration of human memory, its uses and misuses, that spans centuries in a twisty braid full of jaw dropping revelations and breathtaking reversals. An elegant and brainy page-turner from a master storyteller.”
- Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Caleb’s Crossing

“A work marked by brilliant conceits and clever plotting.”
- Kirkus Reviews

“[Within A Guide for the Perplexed] beats the living heart of a very human drama, one that will have readers both caught up in the suspense and moved by the tragic dimensions of the unresolved dilemma at the core of the story.”
- Booklist, Starred Review

“Horn is embracing her own, livelier brand of Jewish history, embodied in the joys of discovering-and creating-the past anew.”
- Tablet Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0393064891
• ISBN 13: 9780393064896
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352