A New York Times Notable Book of 2018

Longlisted for the 2019 Simpson Family Literary Prize and the 2019 Wingate Prize

Eternal Life: A Novel

What would it really mean to live forever?

Rachel’s current troubles―a middle-aged son mining digital currency in her basement, a scientist granddaughter trying to peek into her genes―are only the latest in a litany spanning dozens of countries, scores of marriages, hundreds of children, and 2,000 years, going back to Roman-occupied Jerusalem. Only one person shares her immortality: an illicit lover who pursues her through the ages. But when her children develop technologies that could change her fate, Rachel must find a way out. From ancient religion to the scientific frontier, Dara Horn pits our efforts to make life last against the deeper challenge of making life worth living.

 

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“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

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

“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

“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

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

“Passionate, playful, and poignant.”
– Parade

“Materful page-turner…Eternal Life is at its core a serious meditation on the meaning of life and purpose of death.”
– Renee Ghert-Zand, Times of Israel

“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 The Secret Chord

“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

“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 The Dinner Party

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Order Eternal Life at Amazon.com, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s 

or your local Independent book store.