A Guide for the Perplexed: A Novel
Software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi has invented an application that records everything its users do. When she visits the Library of Alexandria as a tech consultant, she is abducted in Egypt's postrevolutionary chaos with only a copy of the philosopher Maimonides' famous work to anchor her--leaving her jealous sister Judith free to take over her life. A century earlier, Cambridge professor Solomon Schechter arrives in Egypt, hunting for a medieval archive hidden in a Cairo synagogue. Their stories intertwine in this spellbinding novel of how technology changes memory and how memory shapes the soul.
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Community Reviews
Dara Horn is an ambitious novelist. In "A Guide for the Perplexed," she tackles simultaneously issues of sibling rivalry, with clear references to the biblical Joseph and his brothers and the preservation of memory and how it has been kept over the centuries. All this is spun around a semi-thriller involving the protagonist, Josie Ashkenazi, a young, brilliant and successful tech wizard who is abducted while on a consulting mission at the Library of Alexandria.
Several aspects of the narrative are not so plausible, such as Josie's seeming ability to run a successful software company while having plenty of time for her daughter, as well as her willingness to travel to Egypt after the revolution with her obviously Jewish name and background. Still, I enjoyed this book very much. Horn's writing is lucid and often, lyrical. I like the fact that she includes history about the famed Cairo genizah, repository of nearly a millenium of written records from the Jewish community, and shows us through historical fiction how historian/theologian Solomon Schechter came to discover this treasure trove in the early 20th century and get it moved to Cambridge, where he taught.
Moses Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher who wrote the treatise about Judaism called "The Guide for the Perplexed," is also a character in the book. I also do not think the sections about him work that well as part of Horn's overall narrative about memory. Maimonides is seen struggling mightily to maintain his scholarly work while also serving as a physician in 12th century Egypt, and he, too, also has some conflict over his relationship with his own brother.
Inexplicably, Josie takes a copy of Maimonides' "Guide for the Perplexed" and reads it while in captivity, musing over the nature of memory and the nature of God's omniscient knowledge. It makes Josie regret her own obsession with her software creation, also called "genizah" because it is an application that can store and file photos, videos, and other documents onto a computer drive. Josie herself realizes while shackled in her "cell" that she has abused her own creation, focusing more on storing data than living in the present.
Like many other reviewers, I found the end of the book very disappointing. After so much emphasis on troubled sibling relationships (Josie and her sister Judith; Maimonides and his brother, David, Solomon Schechter and his brother), and with all that Josie has endured and supposedly has learned about what matters in life, Horn ends the book on a sad and despairing note. It, too, focuses on a troubled sibling relationship, where one sibling seems destined to be forever overshadowed by a sibling who is overloved and overvalued by the parents they both love and need. A perplexing and bleak finale.
Several aspects of the narrative are not so plausible, such as Josie's seeming ability to run a successful software company while having plenty of time for her daughter, as well as her willingness to travel to Egypt after the revolution with her obviously Jewish name and background. Still, I enjoyed this book very much. Horn's writing is lucid and often, lyrical. I like the fact that she includes history about the famed Cairo genizah, repository of nearly a millenium of written records from the Jewish community, and shows us through historical fiction how historian/theologian Solomon Schechter came to discover this treasure trove in the early 20th century and get it moved to Cambridge, where he taught.
Moses Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher who wrote the treatise about Judaism called "The Guide for the Perplexed," is also a character in the book. I also do not think the sections about him work that well as part of Horn's overall narrative about memory. Maimonides is seen struggling mightily to maintain his scholarly work while also serving as a physician in 12th century Egypt, and he, too, also has some conflict over his relationship with his own brother.
Inexplicably, Josie takes a copy of Maimonides' "Guide for the Perplexed" and reads it while in captivity, musing over the nature of memory and the nature of God's omniscient knowledge. It makes Josie regret her own obsession with her software creation, also called "genizah" because it is an application that can store and file photos, videos, and other documents onto a computer drive. Josie herself realizes while shackled in her "cell" that she has abused her own creation, focusing more on storing data than living in the present.
Like many other reviewers, I found the end of the book very disappointing. After so much emphasis on troubled sibling relationships (Josie and her sister Judith; Maimonides and his brother, David, Solomon Schechter and his brother), and with all that Josie has endured and supposedly has learned about what matters in life, Horn ends the book on a sad and despairing note. It, too, focuses on a troubled sibling relationship, where one sibling seems destined to be forever overshadowed by a sibling who is overloved and overvalued by the parents they both love and need. A perplexing and bleak finale.
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