The Golem of Brooklyn

1

Four Hundred Pounds of Clay

Len Bronstein was not so much in need of a golem as he was in possession of a large quantity of clay, and very stoned. Three hours earlier, after his morning coffee and in lieu of breakfast, he had eaten a hazelnut lace cookie containing twenty milligrams of THC, the last of a batch his friend Waleed had baked and brought to Len s Memorial Day cookout a few weeks earlier. Waleed did this regularly it was how he expressed love, and also how he gained new customers. The nature of an event was always fundamentally altered by Waleed s arrival. It was awesome.

For the last several years, Len had been stealing one five-pound brick of premium sculpting clay each week from the private high school in Brooklyn Heights where he worked as an art teacher. He didn t really know why. Len liked his job, liked his co-workers, got along fine with his students both the merely wealthy and famous actors kids. Had Len asked, his department head probably would have invited him to take home all the clay he wanted. The school was awash in resources of every sort: the filmmaking lab had professional-grade cameras and editing suites, the fifth grade math teachers had PhDs. If Len had been fortunate enough to attend a school like this, he never would have ended up a high school art teacher.

Len was no sculptor; his artistic disciplines were not-painting and not-writing, which made the vast reserve of clay stacked up in the shed in the backyard all the more perplexing. But as Waleed s cookie and with it, Waleed s genius hit him full force, Len walked out of his garden apartment and into his apartment s garden, and the splintering, hard-to-latch door of the shed listed open, affording him a glimpse of the wall of light gray clay, and Len decided that today was the day to begin writing the masterwork of speculative fiction he d been sketching out in his head, here and there, for the last however-many months.

The concept of the novel was that in

Adam Mansbach is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the F**k to Sleep, as well as the novels Rage Is Back, The End of the Jews (winner of the California Book Award), and Angry Black White Boy, and the memoir-in-verse I Had a Brother Once. With Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, he co-authored For This We Left Egypt? and the bestselling A Field Guide to the Jewish People. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Believer, and The Guardian.

Adam Mansbach s latest did not put me the F**k to Sleep. Quite the opposite, this is the update to the Golem legend I ve been dreaming of since I survived Jewish Day School. Run don t schlepp to the nearest bookstore and get ready to split your kishkes laughing. Gary Shteyngart

Jewish humor goes back a long way. And to a pantheon that includes Brooks, Bruce, Seinfeld, and David, add Mansbach at its virtual apex, with acerbic wit and an absurd premise: a supernatural avenger, a folklore savior of persecuted Jews, let loose in Trump s America. Such satisfying calamity, this crisp book is easily the funniest novel I ve ever read, and yet achieves an uncanny profundity. Mansbach s voice is absolutely singular. Dan Charnas, New York Times bestselling author of Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, The Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

Fast-paced and full of memorable characters, Adam Mansbach s The Golem of Brooklyn is both a searing and hilarious tale of how far we're willing to go to protect ourselves and our community, and who we become when we do so. Mansbach s ability to infuse wisdom, political insight, history and humor is commendable, and makes this book a page-turner. Fatimah Asghar, Carol Shields Prize-winning author of When We Were Sisters

This novel could not be any funnier or any more important. A devastating romp through history, a bonkers road trip through America, and a searing examination of the question that will determine our future: how do we confront those who hate us, and at what cost? W. Kamau Bell