The Puttermesser Papers

Overflowing with ideas, spiked with wit and humanity, The Puttermesser Papers is a tour de force by one of America's most visionary novelists.

Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental; her love life is minimal. And her most idle fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true. She yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem - a Jewish mythological homunculus. She also manages to get herself elected mayor. Then Puttermesser inadvisably contemplates the afterlife, whereupon she is immediately hurtled into it headlong and discovers, at the end of it all, that a paradise found is also paradise lost.

A novel of unspeakable joys - Guardian

Shortlisted for the 1997 National Book Award