Editorial Content for The Golem and the Jinni
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Otto Rotfeld is a lonely man who wants a wife. Knowing his chances are nearly impossible with the women of his Polish village, he turns to an outsider to fulfill his request. A man who practices dark magic agrees to make him a wife of clay, a golem. The request is difficult to fill, but the strange old man manages the creation, and shortly after, the golem and her master board a ship for America. Rotfeld wakes the golem on the ship but dies soon after, leaving her to fend for herself in a world she doesn’t understand with no one to watch over her. After arriving at Ellis Island, the golem runs, inundated by the wants and needs of those crowded around her. Rabbi Meyer, a widower making his way in New York, spies the golem. Knowing what she is and fearing for not only the golem but those around her, he takes her in and names her Chava.
"Helene Wecker does a fine job of pulling strings in this story. What might feel like several story lines is really one very long tale that twists and turns but never tangles. It’s an incredible web that draws people together in ways never imagined."
Maryam Faddoul is the heart of her Syrian neighborhood. One day, she takes an old copper flask, a family heirloom, to the local metal smith, Arbeely, to be repaired. While fixing the flask, Arbeely unknowingly releases a jinni. The jinni, now named Ahmad, has trouble living by the strict rules that govern human form. Chained by the spell that captured him hundreds of years ago, he can no longer take his true jinni form. He struggles to accept what little he can experience of life as a human. While roaming the dark streets of New York City, he attempts to find a bit of freedom. It’s on one of these explorations that he meets Chava and becomes fascinated by her and what she is.
Mythical creatures struggling to fit into the daily life of 1890s New York City, Chava and Ahmad want to stay hidden but chafe at pretending to be human. Taking to the night, the two explore the city, grow close, and begin accepting that life will always be this way for them. When they are involved in a tragic event, their lives, and the lives of those around them, change forever. Choices are made, lives move forward, and the golem and jinni once more find ways to survive.
How can you not love a story about mythical creatures set in 1890s New York City? It’s such a rich narrative, and I enjoyed how Chava and Ahmad fought to fit in. The Syrian and Jewish neighborhoods that take them in are full of incredible characters and their lives become mirror images of the immigrants around them.
Chava is particularly interesting in the way she fights not to fulfill every want and wish by which she is mentally bombarded. Built to obey a master, but living without one, she learns to control the impulse to help everyone and fix everything. It’s painful and troubling, but she endures. Ahmad, on the other hand, steeps himself in sorrow and self-pity, longing for a former life far out of reach. It’s Chava who teaches him that there’s more to being human than what he believes. It’s the limitations of these mythical creatures that make them human.
Helene Wecker does a fine job of pulling strings in this story. What might feel like several story lines is really one very long tale that twists and turns but never tangles. It’s an incredible web that draws people together in ways never imagined. There’s nothing better than a story like that. This may be a story of mythical creatures, but in the end, it’s a story of people adjusting to new lives and learning how to fit in. The simplicity of that is what makes THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI wonderful.
Teaser
A lonely man’s desire for a wife is the catalyst for the creation of a golem like no other. When she’s left master-less on the streets of New York City, she fights her ingrained impulse to help and protect those around her. A jinni, captured and enslaved hundreds of years ago, is free of his flask but not truly free as the iron cuff that keeps him in human form remains on his wrist. The golem and the jinni are drawn to each other, kindred spirits of long-forgotten fairy tales.
Promo
A lonely man’s desire for a wife is the catalyst for the creation of a golem like no other. When she’s left master-less on the streets of New York City, she fights her ingrained impulse to help and protect those around her. A jinni, captured and enslaved hundreds of years ago, is free of his flask but not truly free as the iron cuff that keeps him in human form remains on his wrist. The golem and the jinni are drawn to each other, kindred spirits of long-forgotten fairy tales.
About the Book
An immigrant tale that combines elements of Jewish and Arab folk mythology, Helene Wecker’s sparkling debut novel tells the story of two supernatural creatures who arrive separately in New York in 1899. The woman is a golem created out of clay in Poland by an aged dabbler in the dark Kabbalistic arts to be the wife of a man who then dies at sea, leaving her unmoored and adrift as the ship comes into New York harbor; the man is a jinni, a being of fire, who is trapped by a Bedouin wizard in a copper flask and released accidentally by a Syrian tinsmith in lower Manhattan.
The narrative traces their respective journeys, as they explore the strange human city. Chava, as a kindly old rabbi names her, is beset by human desires and wishes, which she can feel tugging at her; Ahmad, baptized by the tinsmith who makes him his apprentice, is aggravated by human dullness. But they both work to make at least a temporary place for themselves in this new world, and develop tentative relationships with the people in their neighborhoods.
In an exciting and fast-paced narrative of adventure and adversity, the golem and the jinni finally meet: it is not exactly a romance, and at first they are hostile and suspicious, but they end up forming a strong bond, since only they can recognize each other for what they truly are. Surrounding them, and crucial to their story, is a colorful cast of supporting characters: the café owner Maryam Faddoul; the solitary Ice Cream Saleh; Rabbi Meyer’s beleaguered nephew Michael whose Sheltering House receives newly arrived Jewish immigrants; the young Fifth Avenue socialite Sophia Winston; and the mysterious Joseph Schall, aka Yehuda Schaalman, with his spells and esoteric wisdom.
A marvelous and compulsively readable work of fiction, THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI is a fresh combination of vivid historical novel and magical fable. With threads from Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, it belongs in a tradition of contemporary Jewish writing that draws on folk and pop cultural materials, like Michael Chabon’s THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, different though that book is.
