The golem and the jinni book review

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.