De procedure

In the late-sixteenth century, Rabbi Jehudah Low, in order to guarantee the safety of the Jews in Prague, tries to make a golem with the aid of a third-century Cabalist text. Four hundred years later Viktor Werner, a biologist, causes an international uproar when he creates in his laboratory a complex organic clay crystal that can reproduce and which has a metabolism. He has, in effect, manufactured a primitive organism out of inorganic materials. We learn of Viktor's life after his discovery as he starts new research and is pursued by his own inner and outer demons. In this elegantly written…