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In a story book I found this construct:

「sentence where one character insults another」そこまで言うか。

Literally "Does he say until there". I can only guess that it means "He went as far as to say ..." or something like that. But it that's true, then why the か?

It's possible that そこまで言うか is a separate sentence not attached to the quotes. Maybe "Did he really say that?" would work. Dosen't seem like something I'd expect the narrator (who is not part of the story) to say though.

Is this a fixed formula I should learn or am I missing the obvious translation? Thanks.

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    Depending on the situation (and the characters way of speaking), something in the way of "Did you really just say that?" or "Are you going to take it that far?". You say the Narrator says it (assuming that one of the characters in the insult throwing isn't the narrator), thus the か may not denote a question but a proposition such as "If you are going to take it that far..." Is there any more you can give that would give context to the phrase?
    – The Wandering Coder
    Nov 1, 2015 at 23:56

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It's more like accusing the other party of being a jerk.

「あいつは心底使えない。辞めてくれれば清々するのに」
「そこまで言うか」(You guys were friends just a few days ago!)

.

「あいつはハゲ、デブ、チビと三拍子揃ってるし、一生結婚は無理だろうな」
「そこまで言うか」 (That's a bit going too far)

The か can express both a question or a strong emotional reaction. You can also say そこまで言う？ but in this case, it's always a question or accusation (and thus you must always pronounce it as a question), whereas そこまで言うか can be used in different tones because か does not always indicate a question (rather, it just indicates a strong feeling aka 感嘆). For example:

「お前はパチンコばっかりで、親らしいこと一回もしたことがないだろう。最低な奴だ！」
「そこまで言うか。。。」 (half admitting and sad)

In the above example you can NOT use そこまで言う because it would change the meaning.

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