Eternal Life

Name: Eternal Life
ISBN: 9780393608540

A Novel

Dara Horn

A BOOKLIST EDITORS’ CHOICE
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

What would it really mean to live forever? Rachel is a woman with a problem: she can't die. Her recent troubles—widowhood, a failing business, an unemployed middle-aged son—are only the latest in a litany spanning dozens of countries, scores of marriages, and hundreds of children. In the 2,000 years since she made a spiritual bargain to save the life of her first son back in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, she's tried everything to free herself, and only one other person in the world understands: a man she once loved passionately, who has been stalking her through the centuries, convinced they belong together forever.

But as the twenty-first century begins and her children and grandchildren—consumed with immortality in their own ways, from the frontiers of digital currency to genetic engineering—develop new technologies that could change her fate and theirs, Rachel knows she must find a way out.

Gripping, hilarious, and profoundly moving, Eternal Life celebrates the bonds between generations, the power of faith, the purpose of death, and the reasons for being alive.

“[Horn's] lyrical sentences, sharp intellect and originality place her among the finest American Jewish novelists writing today.” —Sandee Brawarsky, Jewish Week

“An elegant musing on sacredness, history and purpose that is, at the same time, a deliciously romantic, highly suspenseful page-turner.” —Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse

“In Eternal Life, the familiar account of the joys and sorrows of motherhood turns strange and mythical. Wisdom literature is a rare thing, and even rarer when it arrives, as it does here, in a story so passionate and playful.” —Joshua Ferris, author of A Calling for Charlie Barnes

“A mature, wry, uniquely female take on the problem of immortality.” —Chelsea Leu, Los Angeles Review of Books

“As a philosophical novel, Eternal Life asks the most fundamental of questions: What makes life meaningful? Is its traditional arc, from birth through family formation to death, necessary? Is it a blessing that we insufficiently appreciate?” —Julia M. Klein, Forward

“Horn does not hedge her bets, whipping up a Jewish telenovela of ancient-world drama and present-day complications. It'll put you off immortality for good.” —Marion Winik, —Newsday

“I have been in love with Horn's work since her first gorgeous novel, In the Image.... [Eternal Life] shimmers with Horn's signature blend of tragedy and spirituality.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post

“Passionate, playful, and poignant.” —Parade

“Rachel speaks with the wisdom of the ancients when she observes that immortality offers no consolation for the death of others. 'Not dying doesn't make it better, ' she says of all that sorrow. 'It only makes it take longer.' “ —Sam Sachs, Wall Street Journal

“The chilling pathos of Dara Horn's Eternal Life is bound to turn every mortal reader into a philosopher of cosmic joy.” —Cynthia Ozick, author of Foreign Bodies

“To an extent, it's the humor (and horror) of infinite diaper changes that drives this masterful page-turner. However, Eternal Life is at its core a serious meditation on the meaning of life and purpose of death.” —Renee Ghert-Zand, Times of Israel

“Riveting, startling, hilarious, and sad—I've never read anything like it.” —Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot

About the Author

Dara Horn is an acclaimed American novelist and scholar whose fiction explores Jewish history, memory, and the stories people inherit and reinvent. She holds a PhD in Hebrew and Yiddish literature from Harvard University and has taught Jewish literature and Israeli culture at Harvard and Sarah Lawrence College.

Her debut novel, In the Image (2002), was followed by The World to Come (2006), All Other Nights (2009), A Guide for the Perplexed (2013), and Eternal Life (2018). Her novels range from a Chagall-inspired mystery involving a stolen painting, to the story of a Jewish Union spy during the Civil War, to an immortal woman who has lived through millennia of Jewish history. Her work often draws on rabbinic tradition, lost Jewish texts, and the long arc of Jewish survival.

Horn has received the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Granta named her one of the Best Young American Novelists. Her nonfiction book People Love Dead Jews (2021), a collection of essays on how the world engages with Jewish history and antisemitism, was a bestseller. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Smithsonian. She lives in New Jersey with her family.