A Guide for the Perplexed

"Computer science and medieval philosophy mesh in [this] accomplished novel about digital dangers and the nature of memory." —Barbara Kiser, Nature

Booklist Editors' Choice

"Intricate and suspenseful. . . . An elegant and brainy page-turner from a master storyteller." —Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Caleb's Crossing

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.

"[An] intense, multilayered story." —Jami Attenberg, New York Times Book Review

"A genuinely page-turning kidnapping story that is also replete with historical, psychological, and interpretive insights into Maimonides, envy, and motherhood, not to mention replicating the narrative structure and central themes of the biblical story of Joseph. . . . Horn's most ambitious, audacious, edifying, and entertaining novel yet." —Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them