Dara Horn Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Graphic Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Dara Horn
Dara Horn got her doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard University, studying Hebrew and Yiddish. She’s taught courses in these subjects at Yeshiva University and Sarah Lawrence College, and has held the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies at Harvard. She’s lectured for audiences in hundreds of venues throughout Australia, North America, and Israel.

Dara was one of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists (2007), and has received three National Jewish Book Awards, among other honors. She was a finalist for the Simpson Family Literary Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the Wingate Prize. Dara’s novels have been selected as San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of the Year, New York Times Notable Books, Booklist’s 25 Best Books of the Decade. They have also been translated into 12 languages.

Her nonfiction work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, The Jewish Review of Books, and Tablet, as well as other publications.

“In the Image” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2002. One young woman’s coming of age, a spiritual journey, and a romantic love story, each one infused with the lessons of history.

Bill Landsmann is an elderly Jewish refugee living in a New Jersey suburb with a passion for traveling, and is obsessed with building his slide collection of images out of the Bible that he finds scattered throughout the world. The book opens with him crossing paths with Leora (his granddaughter’s friend), and continues by moving forward through her life and backward through his. Ultimately, this reveals the unexpected connections between his family’s past and her family future.

Not only a first novel but also a cultural event, a wedding of religious and secular forms of literature, this novel neither lives in the past nor does it seek to escape from it, instead it assimilates it, in the best possible sense of the word. It honors what is lost and discovering, among the lost things, that treasures which can renew the present.

Winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in 2002 and the Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction in 2003.

“The World to Come” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2005. One of Marc Chagall’s million dollar paintings has been stolen from a museum during this singles’ cocktail hour. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, who is a lonely former child prodigy that writes questions for quiz shows and who’s certain that painting once hung on a wall of his parents’ living room. While Ben attempts to evade the cops, he and Sara (his twin sister) seek the truth out about how this painting got to the museum in the first place, whether or not the “original” is really a forgery, and whether Sara, an artist herself, is able to create a convincing forgery that can take its place.

Back in 1920s Soviet Russia, some 80 years ago, Marc Chagall taught art to orphaned Jewish boys. There Chagall befriended the great Yiddish novelist known as “Der Nister” (The Hidden One), a pen name. And it’s there, with the lives of some real artists, that the story of the painting starts, carrying with it not just a hidden fable by the Hidden One but also the tale of the Ziskind family. From Russia to New Jersey and then Vietnam.

Dara interweaves romance, mystery, folklore, theology, history, and scripture into this spellbinding modern story. She brings readers on a breathtaking collision course of past, present, and future, revealing the ordinariness and the beauty of “the world still to come”. Nestling tales within tales, it’s a novel of remarkable clarity with a deep inner meaning.

Dara’s deft touch is often wryly funny, yet never maliciously so. This is an accomplished work which beautifully explains just how families, in all of their maddening, supportive, smothering glory create us. This is a piercingly beautiful and symphonic read as it suspends us between emotions, without any becoming predominant, and we just hang there in this indeterminate space, perfectly happy, while hoping the novel never ends.

“All Other Nights” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2009. How is tonight any different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, who is a Jewish soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, it’s a question that his commanders have already answered for him. On Passover 1862, he’s ordered to kill his own uncle in New Orleans, who has been plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. Jacob, after this harrowing mission, gets recruited to pursue another enemy agent, a Virginia family friend’s daughter. However this time around, his assignment is not to murder the spy, but marry her. Their marriage, with its horrifying and riveting consequences, reveals the deep divisions which still haunt American life today.

Based on real personalities such as Judah Benjamin, the Jewish Secretary of State for the Confederacy and spymaster, and on historical events and facts that range from an African-American spy network to the dramatic self-destruction of the city of Richmond, this is a suspenseful and captivating tale of women and men that are driven to the extreme limits of betrayal and loyalty. It is also a brilliant parable of the rift in America which lingers 150 years later. Between those that value tradition and family first, and those that are dedicated, no matter what the cost, to racial and social justice for all.

Dara brings us page turning storytelling at its best in her eagerly awaited third novel. Layered with meaning, this book presents the most American of subjects with insight and originality, and the possibility of reconciliation which may yet await us.

This novel moves along at a thriller’s pace; with the mix of loyalty and love played out in a divided America in such a sublime way. It’s a great story of adventure, dignity and loss, betrayal and love, which takes your breath away and makes your heart race. Dara’s novel has a gripping plot premise and a fascinatingly conflicted protagonist.