![]() “Passing as human was a constant strain,” Wecker writes. The “glowing man” and the clay woman share the loneliness of not fitting in. Most important, Wecker gives her main characters appealing emotional resonance, through their inner thoughts, which are not so inhuman after all, and their conversation. ![]() Wecker’s portrait of the shared experience of Jewish and Arab immigrants feels like a walk back in time, exploring the “wondrous and terrifying” city from the harbor view at Castle Gardens to the carriage roads of Central Park, from the Yiddish speaking shops to the coffeehouses of Little Syria in Lower Manhattan. Working with Arbeely, who names him Ahmad, the Jinni becomes a master metalworker, creating fantastical gold and silver birds, striking bejeweled necklaces, and a ceiling of tin that re-creates the Syrian desert, the “portrait of an ancient memory.” Boutrous Arbeely, a Syrian Christian tinsmith hired to do repairs, frees him unexpectedly. The Jinni, a volatile fire creature, has been imprisoned within a copper flask for a millennium under circumstances he can’t recall. ![]()
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