In the late 16th Century, Rabbi Jehudah Loew, in order to guarantee the safety of the Jews in Prague, tries to make a Golem with the aid of a 3rd-century Kabbalist text. Four hundred years later, Victor Werker, a biologist, causes an international uproar when he creates in his laboratory a complex clay crystal that can reproduce and has a metabolism. He has, in effect, manufactured a primitive organism out of inorganic materials. We learn of Victor's life after this discovery as he starts new research and is pursued by his own inner and outer demons.

In this elegantly written and immaculately constructed story of two men who suffer similar punishments for their hubris, one of Europe's greatest living writers attempts nothing less than to unravel the structure and meaning of man's being.