Podolia, 1910: one day, a stranger arrives at the shtetl. He walks with a limp, appears to be deaf and has the look of a vagrant. The tight-knit community is on the point of chasing him out, but the local tzaddik sees the spark of holiness in his eyes. Named Rafael, he settles in the shtetl and begins forming close relationships with members of this Hasidic community - and slowly, this incomprehensible, magnetic figure stirs up buried feelings and old conflicts. Is he a divine figure, as some speculate, or does his arrival presage disaster?Written in poetic prose that draws on fascinating elements of Jewish folklore and mysticism, Golem reconstructs a vanished world with a spellbinding combination of the real and the fantastical.



Maciej Płaza is a Polish writer, scholar and translator. He is the author of four works of fiction for which he has received numerous awards, including the Gdynia Literary Prize and the Angelus Central European Literature Award. He translates from English into Polish and received a Literatura na świecie ("Literature in the World") Award for his translation of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by many of Poland's leading contemporary novelists, including Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk and Artur Domosławski. In 2018 she was honored with Poland's Transatlantyk Award for the most outstanding promoter of Polish literature abroad. Her translation of Mikołaj Łoziński's My Name is Stramer is also available from Pushkin Press.



A wise and sensitive book... [with] beautiful language



Płaza's rendition of the religious and existential spirit of the shtiebel is so vivid, his storytelling so propulsive and gripping, I found it hard to put Golem down for even a few moments. Rarely does a historical novel so rich in the diction and everyday life of the past feel so utterly contemporary



Fascinating and poetic... a strange, slippery story told through the eyes of outsiders