In writing this book, I imagined that all of these worlds might be much more similar to each other than we think-that our lives are in fact the after-lives of those who came before us, and also the before-lives of those who will follow, and that we are creating all of those worlds to come with every choice we make in the world we live in. And for all of us, the world to come is literally just the future. But there are also elements of Jewish legend that discuss a life before birth-and for those who haven't yet been born, I realized, the world we live in now is the world to come. It's used in the Jewish tradition to mean a future redemptive age, which is often conflated with life after death. The ending is ambiguous, but in such a way that it's a bit like the optical illusion where some people see a candlestick and others see two faces in profile the ambiguity isn't obvious, and each reader is convinced that his reading is the only one.ĮG Do you see the ending as hopeful or tragic?ĮG What is the origin of the phrase "the world to come"?ĭH Like the ending of the story, "the world to come" is a phrase with multiple meanings. (I'm kidding.) Actually, I've had readers who have felt as you did, and others who were equally moved by how tragic they felt the story was. Have other readers told you this?ĭH In fact, I often hand readers millions of dollars so that they will tell me this. It was as if someone handed me a million dollars. They are closer than we think.ĮG I felt deliriously happy after reading The World to Come. Just because we think people have disappeared doesn't mean they have. This, according to a story Sara once heard, is also the way of real death and the world to come. Only a moment later, he will understand that his twin has not died, but quite the opposite, that his vanished friend is closer to him than he can know. When twins are in the womb and one of them is born-Sara remembered hearing once-the twin who remains behind watches his sole companion vanish and suffers an agony almost too devastating to bear. Horn lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. Her work has appeared in many national and international publications including Newsweek, Time, and The New Republic. Horn's second novel published in January 2006 by W.W. Time Magazine called The World to Come "a deeply satisfying literary mystery." It was also chosen as one of the Best Books of 2002 by the San Francisco Chronicle and one of the Top Five Novels of 2002 by the Christian Science Monitor. Norton when she was 25, received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. Her first novel, In the Image, published by W.W. Dara Horn is a novelist, essayist, professor, and scholar.
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