Abraham Rothberg, an author whose works, most of them fiction, roamed from the ghettos of medieval Prague through the counterculture upheavals of America in the 1960s to the machinations of Soviet Communism, died March 28 at his home in Rochester. He was 89.

His wife, Esther Conwell, confirmed his death.

A son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Rothberg tapped into his Jewish roots, Depression-era upbringing and anti-Stalinist leanings in writing 22 books. His 1970 book, “The Sword of the Golem,” based on the Jewish folk tale of an anthropomorphic being created from inanimate matter, tells of a rabbi in 16th-century Prague who molds a golem out of clay, hoping it will be the savior that Jews in the ghetto have long prayed for. But in a terrifying climax, the creature runs amok among those it was supposed to save.

Citing his “original and atmospheric reconstruction” of the legend, Saturday Review wrote that Rothberg “exhibits great familiarity with the life of medieval Jewry as well as a high degree of literary and narrative skill.”

In “The Stalking Horse” (1972), Rothberg touched on his experiences traveling in Eastern Europe in the 1960s. The book tells of a CIA agent who spends months debriefing a Soviet defector, all the while suspecting that the defection might not be real.

“A thrilling novel,” Harper’s Magazine said, adding, “The danger is electric and ever-threatening.”

In 1968, Rothberg wrote “The Other Man’s Shoes,” about an American journalist returning home after years overseas and experiencing a changed society: ghettos on the edge of revolution, young radicals demonstrating, sexually liberated women.

Among Rothberg’s five nonfiction books is “The Heirs of Stalin” (1972), which traces the “thaws and freezes” of cultural life in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin in 1953.