The Golem and the Jinni by Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni by Wecker

?In The Golem and the Jinni, a chance meeting between mythical beings takes readers on a dazzling journey through cultures in turn-of-the-century New York.

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free.

Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.

Helene Wecker grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, a tiny town north of Chicago, and graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in English. She worked in marketing and communications in Minneapolis and Seattle after graduation before deciding she wanted to create something more than a press release. In order to obtain a master's degree in fiction writing at Columbia University, she relocated to New York. She now lives with her spouse and daughter near San Francisco.