![]() ![]() ![]() A century after its first publication, The Golem endures as a piece of modernist fantasy that deserves to take its place alongside Kafka, from an author whose life was almost as fantastic as his fiction. The Golem is a haunting Gothic tale of stolen identity and persecution, set in a strange underworld peopled by fantastical characters. As Robert Irwin says in the introduction to the Dedalus edition of The Golem: We have the Castle which is not Kafka's Castle, the Trial which is not Kafka's Trial, and a Prague which is not Kafka's Prague HP Lovecraft was more succinct, calling The Golem 'the most magnificent weird thing I've come across in aeons'. Meyrink was, of course, a contemporary of Kafka, and his novels have a lot in common with Prague's better-known fantasist. All have been published in English by Dedalus Books since the mid-1980s, and Mike Mitchell's excellent 1995 translations are definitely worth seeking out. Meyrink went on to write several more books, including The Green Face, Walpurgisnacht, the White Dominican and The Angel of the West Window. The main characters eat at the Old Toll House tavern behind the Tyn Church, this beautiful centre of Old Prague now a heaving mass of tourists pouring across the St Charles Bridge in such numbers that they fill the narrow streets and every square and drive you along at their crawl. ![]() The Golem had a magnificent reception, and the collected volume published in 1915 sold 200,000 copies. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |