See the hottest books publishing this Summer

Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The World To Come

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The World To Come by Dara Horn

The World To Come

by Dara Horn
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 16, 2006, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2006, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The World To Come

Print Review

Dara Horn was inspired to write The World To Come following an actual theft of a Marc Chagall painting from a museum in New York that took place during a singles' cocktail hour. More about this.

The painting that Benjamin Ziskind steals from the museum, Study for "Over Vitebsk", is, I assume, fictitious. However Over Vitebsk itself does exist, and can be seen in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. Vitebsk was the town in which Chagall was born and spent his childhood. More about Chagall.

'Der Nister' was the pseudonym of Pinchas Kahanovich, a Yiddish author, philosopher, translator and critic who was born in the Ukraine in 1884 and died in a Soviet Gulag in 1950. Even in his earliest works, he was drawn to the arcane teachings of the Kabbalah (A body of mystical teachings of rabbinical origin - from which the word 'cabal' comes), and adopted the pseudonym 'Der Nister' - 'The Hidden One'. His novel, The Family Mashber was published in English for the first time in 1987. More about Der Nister.

Filed under

This article relates to The World To Come. It first ran in the January 18, 2006 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Busybody Book Club
    by Freya Sampson
    They can't even agree on what to read, so how are they going to solve a murder?

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Songs of Summer
    by Jane L. Rosen

    A young woman crashes a Fire Island wedding to find her birth mother—and gets more than she bargained for.

  • Book Jacket

    Erased
    by Anna Malaika Tubbs

    In Erased, Anna Malaika Tubbs recovers all that American patriarchy has tried to destroy.

Who Said...

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B a L

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.