A Guide for the Perplexed

Reviews / Votes

"So beautiful, so mystical, so exciting...I really urge you to read Dara Horn." -- Bill Goldstein, NBC's Weekend Today Show "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 Idiot and The Possessed "Wondrous...riveting and suspenseful...A novelist at the height of her powers." -- Andrew Ferman - Miami Herald "[A] humane, erudite novel." -- Saul Austerlitz - 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 "Riveting...This is extraordinary material, emotionally resonant and intellectually suggestive, and Horn's portraits of the sisters are wonderfully ambiguous...[Horn] interweaves historical and contemporary tales to create intriguing echoes and layers of metaphor...Horn's searing family drama easily encompasses whole worlds of political, philosophical and moral conflicts...Beautifully written and overwhelmingly sad." -- Wendy Smith - Washington Post "Computer science and medieval philosophy mesh in Dara Horn's accomplished novel about digital dangers and the nature of memory." -- Barbara Kiser - Nature "[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