The Golem and the Jinni (Ciltli)

"Froom its eerie opening pages to its sahttering conclusion, The Golem and the Jinni is an astonishing debut novel that sweeps us into a gaslit alternate reality rich enough to get lost in-a vision of fin de siecle nineteenth-century New York as a city that all the world's immigrants descending on it, including supernatural ones. In this world, where crossing a street or rounding the corner shoots you halfway around the globe-where whole nations are packed into the space of a few blocks, their folk traditions crammed in amongst the tenements and workshops-it seems weirdly plausible that two cultures' mythical creatures could meet on the Bowery and form a connection. It is Helene Wecker's triumph that these supernatural beings-one made of clay, the other of fire-seem as real and as poignant in their struggles for love and belonging as any of their fallow human immigrants, until together they face a villain of truly monstrous proportions."

-Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist and The Black Count

"A tale of two fabled creatures with the intimate feel of a story handed down from generation to generation... The novel explores what it means to be human as Chava an Ahmad struggle to live and find love while overcoming the powerful adversary who threatens to destroy them."

-Deborah Harkness, author of A Discovery of Witcbes and Sbadow of Night