Helene Wecker · 2013 · sea

Helene Wecker's 2013 debut, a luminous historical fantasy in which a clay golem and a fire jinni, two beings out of Jewish and Arab folklore, meet as immigrants in the teeming New York of 1899. Bound by loneliness and difference, they wander the city by night. The map links their distant origins, an ancient Syrian desert and a Polish workshop, to the streets where they finally converge.

1. 1
   The Syrian Desert

   Long ago in the Syrian desert, a jinni of fire is tricked and bound into an old copper flask.

2. 2
   Danzig

   Centuries later in Poland, a golem of clay is brought to life as a wife for a lonely man emigrating to America, who dies on the voyage over.

3. 3
   New York

   In the immigrant tenements of 1899 New York, the masterless golem walks the streets while the flask is opened in a Little Syria coppershop, and two uncanny creatures find each other.