Der Golem [The Golem]

Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1915. First Edition. Near Fine. First edition, first impression; title page dated 1916 and copyright page dated 1915 as called for. Signed by Gustav Meyrink on the front free endpaper. Bound in publisher's red paper-covered boards over white cloth spine with titles printed in black; text in German. Near Fine with light soiling to boards, light foxing to front paste down and light toning to pages, else a rather sharp copy indeed.

An immensely important and influential modernist fantasy novel, written by a contemporary of Franz Kafka, whose literary masterpiece The Metamorphosis was published at nearly the same time and even by the same publisher as Meyrink's Der Golem. An immediate success, Der Golem sold over 200,000 copies during its first year of publication. Jorge Louis Borges called it "a remarkable work of horror, half-way between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein," and H.P. Lovecraft cited it as one of the "best examples" of Jewish weird fiction, exclaiming it was "the most magnificent weird thing I've come across in aeons!"

The legend of the Golem dates back to biblical times, and Meyrink is one in a long line of writers, including Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm, to channel its myth. In Meyrink's retelling, the Golem is a being that reappears in Prague's Jewish ghetto every 33 years, causing strange and unknowable occurrences, and the feeling of being watched by unknown forces lurking in dark shadows. Meyrink was no doubt influenced by his beliefs in occultism, alchemy, Kabbalah and eastern mysticism, and the result is a dream-like narrative of disjointed horror, only partly rooted in this world.