The Golem

In Prague's Jewish Quarter, a man inherits a hat and with it someone else's memories — or perhaps his own, from a life he cannot recall. Meyrink's hallucinatory novel borrows the Golem legend and turns it into something stranger: a meditation on identity, consciousness, and the thin border between dream and waking. The Prague ghetto is rendered as a living organism — narrow streets breathing fog, buildings leaning into each other like conspirators, rooms that seem to rearrange themselves when no one is looking. Published in 1915, The Golem became an international phenomenon and established Prague's reputation as Europe's most uncanny city. Read it at night. Do not expect to sleep immediately after.