If you thought People Love Dead Jews — Dara Horn’s 2021 essay collection examining society’s reverence for remembering deceased Jews while failing to support the living ones — was an awkward book to read in public, just wait until you get your hands on Horn’s newest title: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

Horn, a celebrated novelist who has become the bard of contemporary antisemitism since Dead Jews was published five years ago, is in on the joke; she likes to say that both titles make great beach reads because no one will dare sit within several feet of you. (Her dad even made a custom People Love Dead Jews beach towel for her to test out the theory.) 

But despite borrowing its title from the name of the Nazis’ infamous plan to rid Europe of its 11 million Jews during World War II, Horn’s latest book, which will be published on Sept. 1, is not a Nazi manifesto.

Instead, the title of Horn’s new book serves as an eye-catching, subversive dog whistle that is meant to pique the interest of antisemites — while also serving as a cheeky summary of Horn’s goal of actually trying to come up with a solution to the wave of antisemitism that has swept the world in recent years.

She just can’t believe that she is the one coming up with those solutions.

“I saw People Love Dead Jews as just a detour from my real work, which I see as writing novels,” Horn told Jewish Insider in an interview last week. 

The genesis for Horn’s latest book came in the aftermath of Dead Jews. She spoke at public events often in 2021 and 2022, and she recalls becoming “the receptacle for everyone’s horror stories.” People would go up to Horn after she discussed the book and tell her about their own experiences of antisemitism. They often chalked up these incidents to jokes or misunderstandings or annoyances, such as a couple being ghosted by a longtime friend after the friend attended their son’s bar mitzvah or an actor turned down for roles in Hollywood because they looked “too Jewish.” But when taken together, they present a picture of a society that has learned to accept ambient anti-Jewish hate. 

“This is going to sound really ridiculous,” Horn reflected on her previous book, “but I didn’t even really think it was a book about antisemitism. I saw it as a book about this weird historical phenomenon about the way we commemorate the past and how that affects the present.” 

Many Horn acolytes felt that her thesis was borne out during the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, as they watched sympathy for Jewish victims turn to anger at Israel’s military response and even praise for Hamas’ actions. 

“I’m not happy to have been right about this,” she said.

Horn became a sought-after expert on the willingness of many people to excuse contemporary hatred of Jews while insisting that they are not, actually, antisemitic. She was asked to serve on an antisemitism advisory group at Harvard, her alma mater, though the effort quickly fell apart. She testified to a congressional committee investigating antisemitism at Harvard. In early 2024, she wrote an essay in The Atlantic describing antisemitism as “the big lie,” and examined why so many smart people, including at Harvard, are willing to fall for it. Through all of it, American Jews — particularly young people on college campuses — wrote to her constantly, describing all the ways they had been excluded, shunned, cast out or harassed simply for being Jewish and declining to disavow Israel. 

Horn is not, reflexively, a cynic. She does not think most people are out there looking to attack Jews. She summed up her understanding of non-Jews and how they relate to antisemitism by invoking the story of Purim, the holiday that celebrates the Jewish people’s courage in the face of a genocidal leader. 

“Most people are not Haman,” Horn said, referring to the king’s advisor, who sought to exterminate the Jews of ancient Persia. “Most people are Ahashverosh.” That’s a reference to the bumbling king who pleaded ignorance at the malicious plans of his closest advisor but ultimately supported his ouster when the king’s wife, the Jewish Queen Esther, revealed her identity and asked for his help. 

With her new book, Horn wanted something to offer the people who are ignorant rather than hate-filled, something to share with “your friend who doesn’t get it,” or “the principal of the school who is dealing with this,” she told JI. 

“I am providing a solution. Not a solution in terms of, like, ‘Here’s 10 policy points we should implement,’” Horn explained. “It’s, ‘Here’s the story we need to be telling about who we are, to ourselves and to everyone else,’ and this is the story that is going to inspire people to imagine a better future.” 

So what is that story? Horn wants the world to see Judaism as “a 3,000-year-old anti-tyrannical movement” that “is always going to piss off dominant societies.” 

So the way to understand modern-day antisemitism, Horn argues, is not about “bias or bigotry or prejudice [or] conspiracy theory.” It’s about framing antisemitism as a lie.

“The lie,” Horn continued, “is always the same: Jews are destroying what you value the most.” 

Since Dead Jews came out five years ago, and particularly after Oct. 7, Horn has watched many people freeze in the face of that assertion. She has observed a fatalism creep into the Jewish community, a sense that nothing can help, that this is our lot. 

To those people, her answer is simple: “You don’t have to put up with this crap.”