The World to Come (2006)

On the surface, The World to Come is a story about Benjamin Ziskind, a game-show writer who steals a Marc Chagall painting during a singles event at the Museum of Hebraic Art. But Dara Horn (In the Image) doesn't write about anything on the surface. Her remarkable second novel gracefully time-twists and world-bends across a century, leaping from an otherworldly angelic paradise to war-torn Vietnam to Soviet Russia, and depicting everyone from a young Marc Chagall to a tortured Yiddish author to Ben's art-forging twin sister. The result, both on the surface and in the many layers beneath, is nothing short of amazing.