The only son of a well-to-do furniture maker, Rotfeld had inherited the family business sooner than expected, on his parents’ untimely death from scarlet fever. Rotfeld was a Prussian Jew from Konin, a bustling town to the south of Danzig.
The Golem’s master, a man named Otto Rotfeld, had smuggled her aboard in a crate and hidden her among the luggage. The year was 1899 the ship was the Baltika, crossing from Danzig to New York. The Golem’s life began in the hold of a steamship. An even more powerful threat will emerge, however, and bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their very existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.Ĭompulsively readable, The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, in a wondrously inventive tale that is mesmerizing and unforgettable.
But when the golem’s violent nature overtakes her one evening, their bond is challenged. An iron band around his wrist binds him to the wizard and to the physical world.Ĭhava and Ahmad meet accidentally and become friends and soul mates despite their opposing natures. Released by a Syrian tinsmith in a Manhattan shop, Ahmad appears in human form but is still not free. As the ship arrives in New York in 1899, Chava is unmoored and adrift until a rabbi on the Lower East Side recognizes her for the creature she is and takes her in.Īhmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert and trapped centuries ago in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard. She serves as the wife to a Polish merchant who dies at sea on the voyage to America. Wecker’s storytelling skills dazzle." - Entertainment WeeklyĪ marvelous and absorbing debut novel about a chance meeting between two supernatural creatures in turn-of-the-century immigrant New York.Ĭhava is a golem, a creature made of clay by a disgraced rabbi knowledgeable in the ways of dark Kabbalistic magic. “An intoxicating fusion of fantasy and historical fiction.
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