Novels
- The Golem (1914)
- The Green Face (1916)
- Walpurgis Nacht (1917)
- The Angel of the West Window (1927)
- The White Dominican (1994)
Collections
- The Opal (1913)
Novels Book Covers
Collections Book Covers
Gustav Meyrink Books Overview
The Golem
Gustav Meyrink has long attracted readers for his masterful novels, examining the supernatural, the macabre, the spiritual, and the occult. Nowhere are his skills in greater evidence than in The Golem, his most successful novel, which is also critically acknowledged to be his greatest work. The legend of The Golem, associated with the sixteenth century Rabbi Low of Prague, who is said to have created an artificial man of clay The Golem to protect the inhabitants of the ghetto, has been told many times, but by none more effectively than by Meyrink. Like his contemporary, Kafka, Meyrink excels at creating an atmosphere of fear and apprehension.
The Green Face
Meyrink’s second, and most mystical, novel from 1916: this is the first time this Dedalus edition has been available in North America. Published in Germany to critical and commercial acclaim, it is set in Amsterdam, used as a symbol of European decadence: the city is ultimately destroyed. The Green Face has classic Meyrink features: a mystical wedding a galaxy of grotesque characters the haunting atmosphere of the ghetto In an Amsterdam that very much resembles the Prague of The Golem, a stranger, Hauberisser, enters by chance a magician’s shop. The name on the shop, he believes, is Chidher Green; inside, among several strange customers, he hears an old man, who says his name is Green, explain that, like the Wandering Jew, he has been on earth ”ever since the moon has been circling the heaven.” When Hauberisser catches sight of the old man’s face, it makes him sick with horror, haunting him. The rest of the novel chronicles Hauberisser’s quest for the elusive and horrible old man.
The Angel of the West Window
novel of Elizabethan magus John Dee, tr M Mitchell
The White Dominican
The White Dominican is Gustav Meyrink’s most esoteric novel, and draws on the wisdom of a number of mystical traditions, the most important of which is Tao. It is set in a mystical version of the Bavarian town of Wasserburg, which sits on a promontory surrounded on three sides by the River Inn. The novel describes the spiritual journey of the simple hero, who, guided by a number of figures, escapes the ‘Medusa’s head’ of the world to a transfiguration, through which he joins the ‘living chain’ that stretches to infinity. This is the novel which has been eagerly awaited by those who see Meyrink as not just a novelist, but as a mystic visionary who can tell them what lies on the Other Side.
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