The Book of Splendor - Hardcover

Sherwood, Frances

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393021386 ISBN 13: 9780393021387

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2002

Synopsis

Rochel, an illegitimate seamstress, escapes the travails of poverty through an arranged marriage to the tailor Zev, but finds herself falling in love with Yossel, the Golem created by Rabbi Loew to the protect the Jewish community of seventeenth-century Prague. 18,500 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Frances Sherwood is the author of Vindication, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in South Bend, Indiana.

From Publishers Weekly:

The golem, that legendary monster/ watchman/ savior supposedly created by Rabbi Judah Loew in Prague in 1601, has never lost its ability to inspire the creative imagination. Sherwood, whose last novel, Vindication, was a masterful interpretation of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, here crafts another rich historical fiction, juxtaposing the beleaguered lives of the residents of Prague's Judenstadt with the baroque excesses of the mad, egocentric Hapsberg emperor Rudolph II. As in the legend, Rabbi Loew creates the golem in response to rumors that the Jewish community will be eradicated in a pogrom. In Sherwood's version, the huge figure, miraculously fashioned out of mud from the Vltava River and a secret code embedded in the Kabbalah, is immediately more human and complex than the original. Given the name Yossel, but lacking a tongue and a soul, the giant falls in love with 18-year-old Rochel Werner, a talented seamstress recently married to the community's shoemaker. In counterpoint to the forbidden love story, we read of Rudolph's demented scheme to obtain a potion that will grant him immortality. Brought from London, real-life alchemists Dr. John Dee and sidekick edward Kelley soon find themselves in a feverish race with time to convince Rudolph that they possess the formula. Meanwhile, Rudolph holds the Jewish community hostage since he thinks Rabbi Loew may know the secret to eternal life. Rudolph's well-documented dementia is balanced with the tender love story, even if the latter's resolution seems more wishful than credible in what is on one level a tale of a Jewish community whose right to exist is under continual threat. Sherwood's supple prose and her ability to integrate historical background into a timely and resonant narrative should give this eloquent literary effort popular appeal.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0393021386
• ISBN 13: 9780393021387
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 348