Saturday, March 14, 2009

The World To Come


I finished a good book last night recommended to me by Rabbi and Navy Chaplain Melinda Zalma. The World To Come (whose title can mean either the future or the afterlife) is a well-written story about an ordinary man named Benjamin Ziskind who steals a million-dollar Marc Chagall painting from an art museum. The author, Dara Horn, who studied Yiddish and Hebrew Literature at Harvard, weaves flashbacks into the narrative to give the backstory about Ziskind’s family and their connection to the purloined painting. She sprinkles Yiddish tales and discussions of faith and the meaning of life throughout her at times charming and at times disturbing but always engaging novel. 

You can read a NY Times review of A World to Come here.

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