The novel tells the story of an unnamed narrator interested in misticism that, by accidentally swapping his hat in the cathedral of Prague with a man named Athanasius Pernath, relives part of his life thirty years earlier in a dream. At this point, Pernath is a glum jeweler of dubious sanity in his forties, who spent years in a madhouse due to some unspecified trauma and was clinically hypnotized into forgetting his previous life for his own good. Pernath then gets entangled with a complicated story revolving around the Greedy Jew Aaron Wassertrum and his nemesis the Magical Jew Schemajah Hillel, in whose course he finds a turbulent love coming from his past and a string of supernatural experiences related to the ghostly Prague Golem.
Praised by people as varied as Franz Kafka and H. P. Lovecraft, The Golem is a wonderful puzzle of crime, misery, Kabbalah and even Buddhism, where the lowest points of life and sheer insanity mix up with mystic planes and realities. It had the effect of re-popularizing the legend of the Golem, leading to the 1914 film The Golem, even although it only briefly touches upon the legend and no clay monster actually appears in the novel.
This work contains examples of:
- Ambiguously Evil: Countess Angelina, Dr. Savioli's lover, seems at first a good case of Good Adultery, Bad Adultery, but after Savioli is safe from Wassertrum's revenge, she claims to have become bored of him and tries to hook up with Pernath instead, revealing herself to be a superficial, vapid socialite. However, she is later said to have reconciled with Savioli, meaning this may not be the case after all.
- Ambiguous Situation: At the end of the novel, multiple "real" tellings are given about Pernath's story, including that he, Charousek and Laponder were the same person, or that conversely he never existed. It's also apparent, judging by the fire that never happened, that at least some of the memories relived by the narrator didn't happen either. The narrator ultimately finds Pernath and Miriam happily married and being into mysticism in present time, but it's never revealed what memories were real and which were not.
- Antagonistic Offspring: Charousek is Wassertrum's Child by Rape, and is bent on stopping him.
- The Antichrist: A bizarre legend claims there is house in Prague where Methuselah guards the stone Satan wants to sire to create Armilus, the Jewish Anti-Christ.
- Back-Alley Doctor: Dr. Theodor Wassory was a seemingly respectable ophtalmologist that actually conned a lot of people with
- Being Evil Sucks: Aaron bemoans that "everything he touches is cursed" and believes nobody could ever love him, and this makes him bitter and evil, which in turn makes him even more loathsome, in a downward spiral he is unable to break. He's so afraid of intimacy that he comes to hate everyone that gets close to him, including his own wife and later Miss Charousek, and only acts to destroy them.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Miriam becomes briefly jealous of Pernath's date with Angelina.
- Creepy Child: When Miriam's mother died, Hillel used Kabbalistic magic to remove her grief, accidentally making her look creepy to the rest of the funeral due to her consequently vacant expression and smile.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Charousek casually mentions he was beaten up and forced to eat mud at some point.
- Driven to Suicide: The already insane Pernath plans to commit suicide because after sleeping with his beloved but fickle Angelina nothing will be again the same in his life. Being imprisoned stops it. Charousek later commits suicide, however, in order to destroy Wassertrum's lineage.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Amadeus Laponder is described to have a sweet, Buddha-like face, yet he is imprisoned for raping and killing a woman. It turns out he's innocent: he is just a man with incredible supernatural sensibility whose own mystic road left him open to strange influences, which drove him into rape and kill in a sleepwalking state.
- Golem: The legend of the golem is mentioned and told, although the golem that "appears" in the novel has somehow mutated into something way different from the classical clay man. It's now apparently some kind of Genius Loci that appears every 33 years under the form of a limping Mongolian man in outdated clothes (yeah, as weird as it sounds) and causes strange occurences, both good and bad.
- Greedy Jew: Aaron Wassertrum is a prime example, being greedy, amoral, underhanded, and a rapist and human trader. Not devoid of redeeming qualities, though: surprisingly, both Charousek and Miriam show he deep down is a very miserable, tormented human being who became evil due to his mistrust to everybody.
- Guile Hero: It turns out Innocence Charousek is an incredible manipulator who wants Wassertrum's head.
- Jews Love to Argue: Commented upon by Hillel, who jokes that Pernath talks like a Talmudist when he answers a question with another.
- Love Triangle: Miriam loves Pernath, who loves Angelina, who loves Dr. Savioli. But later Pernath realizes the one he loves is Miriam. It's complicated.
- Magical Jew: Schemajah Hillel, literally so given that he is a wise Kabbalist.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Pernath secretly left coins where Miriam could find them to help her family's povery, but this only leads her to develop supernatural beliefs about miracles and meanings which Pernath's trick obviously cannot live up to. He comes to repent his decision.
- Morality Pet: It turns out Wassertrum loved his son Theodor, even although the latter repudiated him and Wassertrum didn't believe he could ever love him back anyway.
- Mysterious Past: Pernath's previous life. We only get to know his father was Angelina's mentor in some capacity, through which Pernath and Angelina met and struck a bond back when she was a young girl, and that at some point Wassertrum conspired against the Pernath clan and bankrupted them.
- Idle Rich: Charousek claims that many of the ghetto's inhabitants are actually wealthy people who for some reason enjoy living in such a sinister place, and he's probably not lying given all the info he has of everybody. Wassertrum in particular is apparently filthy rich, yet still keeps a miserable job as a scrap dealer.
- Power Trio: Pernath's friends are a trio, the puppeteer Zwakh, the painter Vrieslander and the musician Joshue Prokop.
- Really Gets Around: The debauched Prince Ferri seemingly sleeps with both men and women.
- Red Right Hand: Wassertrum has a creepy cleft lip.
- Reincarnation: Laponder believes the ghostly figures he and Pernath saw in their visions are part of their own souls, "as ants compose the anthill", implying reincarnation, which is part of both Kabbalah and Buddhism.
- Revenge Before Reason: Wassertrum wants revenge on Dr. Savioli for unmasking his own evil doctor son Theodor.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Pernath and company almost get arrested in the Loisitchek cabaret by a police raid, but an aristocrat, Prince Ferri Athenstadt reveals himself among the rabble and tells the cops to go away.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Happens from time to time, especially among Pernath's friends.
- Sensei for Scoundrels: Dr. Hulbert is a heartbroken lawyer that uses his wealth and knowledge to protect people from the Ghetto, creating a sort of cooperative nicknamed the Regiment.
- Sexy Coat Flashing: Rosine Metzeles wear nothing under her coat aside from her stockings and shoes, presumably to help advertise her this way given she's a hooker.
- Spell Book: The Book of Ibbur is a treatise on Kabbalah, given to Pernath by a character implied to be the Golem, which kickstarts the whole of his supernatural experiences.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: When the prison's inmates ask Pernath's crime, he opts to answer with the false charges thrown at him, theft and murder. The inmates are impressed and even a bit scared that this unassuming, weird-eyed man is a murderer, and one of them touches his biceps trying to find out whether he is physically dangerous for them.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Pernath is a barely sane man who then becomes entangled with mystic realities, blurring things even more.
- Younger Than They Look: Pernath is surpsied that his Kabbalistic mentor Hillel is around his same age, as he looks older and wiser.
