Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The World to Come:
1. Start with the book's title. What is its meaning within the context of the novel? Describe in your own words "the world to come." How does it bind together past and present? Is it a vision that you can accept as your own...or simply as one presented by the author?
2. The painting at the heart of the novel is real: "A Study for 'Over Vitebsk,'" in which a bearded man moves "over the houses as if walking—unaware, in murky horizantal profile, that he was actually in flight." Talk about the painting's possible meaning—for art's ability to transport viewers. Might its image also suggest that the characters in this work (perhaps all of us) live magical lives without knowing it?
3. Considering your thoughts for Question #2, what do you make of a character's comment to Der Nister that art doesn't necessarily have meaning—"It's just color. And light. A little happiness. Do yourself a favor and don't beat it to death"? Do you agree with the remark? Does visual art lend itself to "meaning" the same way that writing does? Or is art's effect purely emotional?
4. What do you think of Ben Ziskind? Talk about his theft of the Chagall painting—is it "theft"? What prompts him to take it? Does he have a moral claim to it?
5. What is Ben's relationship with his sister Sara? Talk about her role with respect to the painting?
6. How does Erika Frank trace the painting's heist to Ben?
7. Readers have remarked on the book's otherworldly quality. Do you agree—if so, what lends it that quality? Where, or at what point, in the novel do you sense it most?
8. Dara Horn weaves folk tales into her narrative. Talk about the ways in which the tales are similar to art, even religion, in their opposition to a rational world—what we call "reality." Do you have a favorite tale from the book?
9. How does this work portray art as dangerous—for those who create it or own it? Why has art (visual or other) so often threatened the status quo of governments or society?
10. Also, consider art's uncanny ability (even if, or especially if threatened) to survive. Der Nister, for instance, hides his tales behind Chagall's painting.
11. Many have compared this work to Nicole Krauss's novel, The History of Love. Have you read Krauss's book...and if so, do you see similarities?
12. How would you describe The World to Come—as a mystery, heist story, family saga, romance, fantasy, historical fiction, or a philosophical / religious work?
13. Horn's novel moves back and forth in time and space— from the present, to Russia in the 1920s, and to Vietnam. She incorporates stories within stories. Does this structure enrich the narrative for you? Or do you find it irksome, disjointed, or hard to follow? In other words, how did you experience this novel?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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