The Gates of Midnight: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni)
The long-awaited final installment in the award-winning, bestselling The Golem and the Jinni trilogy.
New York, 1930. Chava the golem, a woman made of clay, lives a secluded life on an ordinary Brooklyn avenue. Created to be a servant, she still wrestles with a life untied to a master. Fifteen years ago, she retreated from human society for fear of being exposed as a monster, relying on the small handful of friends who knew her secret – but over the years, unresolved arguments and untimely deaths have robbed her of their company. Now Chava spends her days as the diligent caretaker of an empty house, still cursed by her uncanny senses to feel the fears and longings of the city beyond her gate.Ahmad the jinni – a creature of fire, who once roamed the Syrian desert, but who has long been trapped in the form of a man – has traded metal-smithing in New York for an architect’s career in Chicago, where he fled to escape discovery. But he, too, has spent the intervening years unsettled and unsatisfied. The looming Great Depression has stalled his prospects, and passing for human is a daily strain. Only during his nightly telephone calls with Chava can he truly be himself. He starts to wonder if they can build a life together again, despite the obstacles they keep trying and failing to overcome.But the world around them has different plans. Yehudah Schaalman, the wizard who created Chava and enslaved Ahmad, is plotting to escape the copper flask that’s been his prison for the past thirty years. He connives his way from the desert wasteland where the flask had been buried, to New York. Before long, speakeasy hostess Selma Radzin, daughter of Chava’s old employer at the bakery, is drawn by accident into Schaalman’s schemes. Thomas Beshara, a man with strange abilities and an unknown past, arrives in Manhattan to help construct the Empire State Building; he, too, falls at once into Chava and Ahmad’s orbit. And Kreindel Altschul, Chava’s longtime companion before their bitter falling-out, discovers a powerful piece of magic that could either defeat Schaalman or destroy her own soul.In the course of a few weeks these lives will tangle together irrevocably, revealing hidden motives and difficult truths. Will Schaalman enslave Chava and Ahmad again, in his quest for immortality? And if they manage to escape his designs, can they survive and find happiness in a world terrified of their magic?
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The long-awaited final installment in the award-winning, bestselling The Golem and the Jinni trilogy.
New York, 1930. Chava the golem, a woman made of clay, lives a secluded life on an ordinary Brooklyn avenue. Created to be a servant, she still wrestles with a life untied to a master. Fifteen years ago, she retreated from human society for fear of being exposed as a monster, relying on the small handful of friends who knew her secret – but over the years, unresolved arguments and untimely deaths have robbed her of their company. Now Chava spends her days as the diligent caretaker of an empty house, still cursed by her uncanny senses to feel the fears and longings of the city beyond her gate.Ahmad the jinni – a creature of fire, who once roamed the Syrian desert, but who has long been trapped in the form of a man – has traded metal-smithing in New York for an architect’s career in Chicago, where he fled to escape discovery. But he, too, has spent the intervening years unsettled and unsatisfied. The looming Great Depression has stalled his prospects, and passing for human is a daily strain. Only during his nightly telephone calls with Chava can he truly be himself. He starts to wonder if they can build a life together again, despite the obstacles they keep trying and failing to overcome.But the world around them has different plans. Yehudah Schaalman, the wizard who created Chava and enslaved Ahmad, is plotting to escape the copper flask that’s been his prison for the past thirty years. He connives his way from the desert wasteland where the flask had been buried, to New York. Before long, speakeasy hostess Selma Radzin, daughter of Chava’s old employer at the bakery, is drawn by accident into Schaalman’s schemes. Thomas Beshara, a man with strange abilities and an unknown past, arrives in Manhattan to help construct the Empire State Building; he, too, falls at once into Chava and Ahmad’s orbit. And Kreindel Altschul, Chava’s longtime companion before their bitter falling-out, discovers a powerful piece of magic that could either defeat Schaalman or destroy her own soul.In the course of a few weeks these lives will tangle together irrevocably, revealing hidden motives and difficult truths. Will Schaalman enslave Chava and Ahmad again, in his quest for immortality? And if they manage to escape his designs, can they survive and find happiness in a world terrified of their magic?
