![]() ![]() But she feels cursed by her gift of hearing what people would rather hide a chorus of desire clamors in her head, and it seems to her that humans never stop wanting, especially what they can’t have. ![]() The golem, who acquires the name Chava (via the Hebrew word for “life”) gets a job in a bakery, where she works like three women and tries hard to fit in, unnoticed. In vigorous, vivid prose, the novel explores what freedom, conscience, empathy, and pleasure mean to human existence, and how difficult it is to balance them. The narrative of The Golem and the Jinni, besides telling the (somewhat) magical realist tale of how these two characters adjust to the New World-and whom they influence, and how-is much larger than that, wherein lies its charm. ![]() He’s no slave and will fight hard against any attempt to change or modify his behavior. But this jinni grants no one three wishes. And though he’s strong and quick, what sets him apart is the light he radiates and the warmth of his touch, which allows him to melt most metals, as the tinsmith soon discovers. A very different being, he’s lived for centuries, mostly in the Syrian Desert, and will probably live several more. Meanwhile, blocks away, a tinsmith repairs an antique copper flask, unwittingly freeing the jinni trapped inside. Mikuláš Aleš’s 1899 rendering of the golem which, according to legend, was created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in 16th-century Prague (courtesy via Wikimedia Commons public domain) ![]()
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