In novel after novel, Dara Horn has devised wildly inventive ways to make Jewish stories new again. She dreamed up a mystery around a Marc Chagall painting in which past, present and future collide; imagined a Jewish soldier in the Union Army ordered to murder his own uncle on Passover 1862; and merged the tales of a modern software prodigy kidnapped in Egypt and a 20th-century scholar, both haunted by the work of medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides.
In her able hands, the Jewish experience, history and mythology eloquently inform the present, and her latest book proves her skill at weaving together seriousness with the fantastical.
A graphic novel, One Little Goat, limns the dryly hilarious tale of a Seder without end because one of the children lost the Afikomen. The Wise Child takes his anxious dad, pregnant mom, 98-year-old great-grandma and an irreverent little goat who shows up at the front door as if Elijah, through Passovers past to find the lost piece of matzo and discover the true meaning of the holiday of redemption.
Horn joins us for a conversation with her sister, Jordana Horn, writer, journalist, and contributing editor for Kveller.
Dara Horn is the author of five novels, including two National Jewish Book Award winners and People Love Dead Jews, a New York Times Notable Book. A scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew literature, she has taught and lectured at over 200 universities.
Sponsored by The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Authors’ Series, honoring Theodore and Caroline Newhouse and Susan Newhouse