1. All Other Nights falls into a peculiar category known as historical fiction. Historians work more with evidence, novelists more with imagination. Historians aspire to rational exposition; novelists provoke readers to wonder about themselves, to cut through strategies of self-protection, and to respond to things that may be difficult to confront. Has Dara Horn succeeded in all this for you? How?

2. God is feared, called upon, pleaded with and invoked many times in this novel. Who does this? When and why? Does talk of “divine intervention” amount to mere rhetoric or is it, in some cases, sincere? Does it seem to you that Dara Horn believes in divine retribution? In retribution of any kind? Eternal damnation? This-worldly redemption?

3. Do you find Judah Benjamin to be a sympathetic character? Why is he given so central a role in Dara Horn’s story?

4. Which incidents, conversations or events signify the presence of anti-semitism, genteel and vulgar, in mid-nineteenth century America, North and South?

5. From the behavior of slaves as portrayed in All Other Nights, where do you think Dara Horn stands in the historiographical argument over the degree to which slaves were psychologically damaged by their experience?

6. Three times in the novel men confront being separated from their wives by force. When and where do these events take place? How do they compare to one another?

7. Philip Levy says more than once that the South is a land of savagery. What are his main reasons for thinking so? Do they have anything to do with his being Jewish? For that matter, does being Jewish influence any of the character’s choices or behavior? What are some specific examples?

8. Dara Horn dedicates her book to her children: “For Maya and Ari, the cause.” What does she mean by this? Does it have anything to do with the content and perspective of this particular novel?