Book Club 11/2/2014

Book Club Announcement – Sunday, November 2, 7 pm, at the home of Mitchell Fromm, 122 North Hayden Parkway, Hudson, OH 44236

Book Selection: Guide For The Perplexed, by Dara Horn

All are welcome! Please join Rebecca Egolf, an veteran book reviewer and discussion leader, for a conversation about the newest book by one of today’s best Jewish novelists. Guide For The Perplexed is a novel about how technology changes memory and how memory shapes the soul, combining fictional modern characters with real historic figures and events.

About the book:
Software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi has invented an app that records everything its users do. When an Egyptian library invites her to visit as a consultant, her jealous sister Judith persuades her to go. But in Egypt’s post-revolutionary chaos, Josie is abducted—leaving Judith free to take over Josie’s life at home, including her husband and daughter, while Josie’s talent for preserving memories becomes a surprising test of her empathy and her only means of escape.

A century earlier, another traveler arrives in Egypt: Solomon Schechter, a Cambridge professor hunting for a medieval archive hidden in a Cairo synagogue. Both he and Josie are haunted by the work of the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, a doctor and rationalist who sought to reconcile faith and science, destiny and free will. But what Schechter finds, as he tracks down the remnants of a thousand-year-old community’s once-vibrant life, will reveal the power and perils of what Josie’s ingenious work brings into being: a world where nothing is ever forgotten.

An engrossing adventure that intertwines stories from Genesis, medieval philosophy, and the digital frontier, A Guide for the Perplexed is a novel of profound inner meaning and astonishing imagination.

Check out a review of the book and profile of the author:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/143707/dara-horn-profile?all=1