It would be impossible in this space to do justice to Wecker’s humongous research into golems and jinnis and what lower Manhattan was like before World War I, but, suffice it to say, she has done her homework. And in Helene Wecker’s charming, albeit way too long, first novel, “The Golem and the Jinni,” their relationship is tested by a megalomaniacal Bedouin wizard, the golem’s evil creator, and all the enticements that Manhattan can offer a couple of curious immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. After all, a golem is a monster made of clay - the cool earth - and a jinni is a creature born of fire. 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.You think a relationship is complicated when a woman is from Venus and a man is from Mars? Trust me, that’s a piece of cake compared with the hurdles that a modest golem and a mercurial jinni face when they fall in love.
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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