The Golem and the Jinni

In Helene Wecker’s first novel - The Golem and the Jinni (Harper) -, two more than usually disoriented foreigners emerge onto the streets of 1899 New York. One is a golem, a clay woman fashioned near Danzig, then shipped across the ocean as the wife of a man who inconveniently dies on the voyage. The other is a jinni from the Syrian desert, trapped inside a copper flask until a hapless tinsmith sets him free during a routine repair. nyt.