The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
A Novel
Michael Chabon
PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
One of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Decade
Book Sense Book of the Year
The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics, now with special bonus material by the author
A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939.
A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze.
He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition.
From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink.
Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age.
“It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.” —The Washington Post Book World
“The depth of Chabon’s thought, his sharp language, his inventiveness, and his ambition make this a novel of towering achievement.” —The New York Times Book Review
“I’m not sure what the exact definition of a ‘great American novel’ is, but I’m pretty sure that Michael Chabon’s sprawling, idiosyncratic, and wrenching new book is one.” —New York
“The themes are masterfully explored, leaving the book’s sense of humor intact and characters so tightly developed they could walk off the page.” —Newsweek
“A page-turner in the most expansive sense of the word: its gripping plot pushes readers forward. . . . Chabon is a reader’s writer, with sentences so cozy they’ll wrap you up and kiss you goodnight.” —Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Michael Chabon (born 1963, Washington, D.C.) is one of the most celebrated American novelists of his generation, and Jewish history, identity, and imagination run through much of his best-known work. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) follows two Jewish cousins, one a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague, who create comic-book heroes in 1940s New York; it joins the immigrant experience, the Holocaust’s shadow, and the Golem legend with the birth of American popular culture. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), a hard-boiled detective story set in an alternate-history Jewish settlement in Sitka, Alaska, imagines a Yiddish-speaking homeland that never lasted, and it won the Hugo, Nebula, and Sidewise Awards. Other works return to Jewish themes, among them the essay collection Maps and Legends, the novella The Final Solution, the novel Telegraph Avenue, which explores Black-Jewish relations and shared cultural ground in Oakland, and the family memoir Moonglow. Throughout, Chabon writes about exile, inheritance, memory, and the question of what it means to belong.
Chabon has also been an active public voice on Jewish literary culture, and he has argued for a renewed, playful engagement with Yiddish language and tradition and for the creative possibilities of Jewish storytelling. His other honors include the Michael L. Printz Award for Young Adult Literature (for Summerland’s companion recognition in the field, as well as a National Jewish Book Award), and he is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, the writer Ayelet Waldman.