2013 book 236

Dara Horn's A Guide for the Perplexed
Well, this book just warmed my history-and-Judaism-loving little heart! Horn's latest (after All Other Nights and In The Image, both of which I loved) has two main parallel storylines--the first, a sort of modern retelling of the story of Joseph from the Bible (I fully expect someone in the future to write a college term paper on the symbolism here--the names alone!) involves genius software developer Josie Ashkenazi, who's invented a program called Genizeh that is like social media ++, and who is convinced by her sister to go to Egypt to do a project with the Alexandria library, where she is then kidnapped (!!). The second involves awesome scholar Solomon Schechter, the namesake of like every Jewish day school, as he (and two Scottish sisters, who are amazing and hilarious here) uncovers the famous Cairo Genizeh. There's also a whole thread involving the Rambam, author of the original Guide for the Perplexed (whose papers were found in the Cairo Genizeh). That all may sound confusing or convoluted, but Horn's novel is entirely readable. She deftly draws all these narrative threads together into one completely engrossing story. I LOVED this. A.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on September 9th.