Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 1173. 'Key work of German Expressionism.' - Barron (ed), Horror Literature 3-148. At the same time, the pending destruction of Prague (and all of Europe itself) is treated by Meyrink with a deep ambivalence, and his next novels all tend to present the apocalypse as an occult cleansing of the material world so that higher unions of the spirit can be achieved.' - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p.

It is, however, like most twentieth-century urban fantasies distinguished from its Gothic ancestors through a sense that the fall of the city will be a bad omen for its inhabitants, not a release. The phantasmagorical, threatened Prague of this novel - its wainscots haunted by a Golem who is more like a psychic fog than an actual entity, and the false polder of its ghetto withering under the baleful light of a new century - makes THE GOLEM into a pure urban fantasy: a tale whose setting, like some vast subterranean edifice, seems literally alive, organic, all-encompassing, Gothic. Meyrink's first novel 'prefigures that disastrous climax to a century of growth and change.

5-288, inserted frontispiece with uncredited drawing of the Golem (this plate does not appear in the UK issue), original purple cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, top edge stained black, fore-edge untrimmed. He worked as a translator and translated in German 15 volumes by Charles Dickens while working on his own novels.Īmong his most famous works are Der Golem (1914) and Walpurgisnacht (1917).Octavo, pp. Meyrinck founded his own bank but was accused of fraud for which he spent 2 months in prison. His son committed suicide at the same age with success. He unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide at the age of 24. The city of Prague is present in most of his work along with various religious, occult and fantastic themes. The illegitimate child of a baron and an actress, Meyrinck spent his childhood in Germany, then moving to today's Czech Republic where he lived for 20 years. Among his most famous works are Der Golem (1914) and Walpurgisnacht (1917). He worked as a translator and translated in German 15 volumes by Charles Dickens while working on his own novels. Curious facts: He unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide at the age of 24.

Golem by Gustav Meyrink