Product Description

The acclaimed new novel from the author of the The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a heart-wrenching story of escape, love and comic-book heroes set in Prague, New York and the Arctic.

One night in 1939, Josef Kavalier shuffles into his cousin Sam Clay's cramped New York bedroom, his arduous and nerve-wracking escape from Prague finally achieved - with the help of his mentor, the master illusionist Kornblum. But little does he realise that this uneasy first meeting is the start of an extraordinary friendship and even more fruitful business partnership.

For Sam, Joe's formidable artistic skills are a chance to liberate them both from lives as inventory clerks at the Empire Novelties Incorporated Company. Together, they create a comic strip called The Escapist, its superhero a Nazi-busting saviour who liberates the oppressed around the world with his Golden Key. The Escapist makes them their fortune and their name, but, as the situation worsens in Europe, Joe can only think of one thing. How can he effect a real-life escape, and free his family from the tyranny of Hitler?

Michael Chabon's exceptional new novel is a thrilling tight-rope walk between high comedy and bitter tragedy, and confirms his position as one of the most inventive and daring of contemporary American writers. In Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, he has created two unforgettable characters bound together by love, family and cartoons. Their story, which ranges from the heady heights of the American Dream to the desperation and grief of the Second World War, and which journeys from New York and Czechoslovakia to the Arctic Circle, will live on in the mind of every reader long after the final page is turned.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #348427 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 639 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses, even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages lurid with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equaliser clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains". Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicentre of comics' golden age.

Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred ageing boys dreaming as hard as they could". Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out of a world gone completely mad. --Mary Park, Amazon.com

Tom Payne, Daily Telegraph
'Perfection. There are perhaps four other books I've loved this much, and none have made me cry more.'

Independent
'Dazzling. Chabon has not so much attempted the great American novel as brought to life the idea that it had already been written - week by week, in the humble heroism of the comic book.'

Customer Reviews

All Tell and no Show
Perhaps the Amazing in the title gave me false expectations but I didn't find anything amazing about this book at all. It never connected with either of the main characters enough for us to care deeply about them - we are expected to understand Clay's struggle with homosexuality but we are never shown any of this - we are told that Joe is mourning for his brother but he doesn't give any convincing evidence of this. And literally nothing Amazing happens - unless you count the implausible method of Joe's escape from Prague in the first place.

The only thing I found interesting was the insight into the comic book world, but even that failed to convince.

Decent enough, but hardly lives up to the Amazing hype.

(3.5 *) Anyway, a worth and entertaining reading
Casualties of II WW and tragic events back in the late 30's, places escapism arts apprentice, Joe Kavalier in a troubled but successful trip directly from Praga to Brooklyn, to the home of an unknown and distant cousin, the young and ambitious cartoon artist Sam Clay. It doesn't take too long for the two boys to know each other and their own creative talents and the accidental encounter between them, not only is the beginning of a deep and lasting friendship but also a popular and successful future team of innumerous stories and characters in the world of the classical comic books.

Michael Chabon creates a very intimate, magical and imaginative world largely due to the perfect portrait of Clay and Kavalier as individuals; this are really two well crafted characters with a very complex personality that the reader absolutely indentifies with, having the particularity to allow him/her to "feel" and understand their most profound and recondite emotions, differences, frustrations, etc.
The novel is also very original and appealing concerning to the way it cross "serious" and dramatic themes and issues, such as the nazi holocaust and war, sexual orientation, religion, corporate greed and putting them through the perspective of a graphic novel and the eyes of the comic heroes as well from those he sets free from the iniquities of "evil". In fact this battle between the "good" and the "bad", where justice is the final goal, where for every super hero there's a super villain, told by the simple and redeeming language of a comic, is the most exciting and distinguish accomplish of the novel; Chabon masters this two universes (reality and the imaginary world of the Escapist) so well, in such a sublime and terrific way, that in my opinion this is one of the main reasons that the novel as a whole, seems to end up being a little disappointed.

Since the beginning till the "golden age" part, the narrative is absolutely flawless, a real page turner, a vivid and colorful writing of the amazing adventures of Kavalier, Clay, Rose, the Escapist, the real villains of the world and also the imaginary ones, but after that, so suddenly as the break of sales of the comic books in the end of the 40's, also the life of our heroes loses the flair, joy and charisma of the youth, turning towards to a sad predictability that at the beginning seemed to be exactly what Chabon wanted to avoid and struggle against to, decided to make a subtle (and artistic) but powerful statement of all the dark forces and inhuman actions that still haunt and blind the human spirit. But maybe after all there is some point in this "adult" transformation, as something being part of the growing process and the loss of innocence, the conclusion that in real life there aren't omnipresent heroes with all the super powers, only average people trying to struggle the best they can against the adversities of life...but for any reason that doesn't seems to fit so well the positive, fresh and always coherent description of character's truthful nature, at least towards their friendship, one of the most important ideas as a concept of the all novel.

if you only have the chance to read one book this year make it this one, you wont be disappointed.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was an instant popular and critical success when it came out in 2000 being nominated for a raft of awards. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 and Hollywood has been sniffing around it ever since. Michael Chabon the author wrote the only known screenplay, which struggled to reduce a 635-page book to a 2-hour film. At one point, the cast was Toby Maguire (Peter in Spiderman) to play Sam Clay, Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta) to play Rosa Saks and Jude Law to play Joe Kavalier.

The difficulties for the film is what makes the book a joy as it starts in 1938 as Superman bursts on the scene and ends in 1954 as the Kefauver Senate hearings delivers the death blow to a declining comic book industry. A central theme is the roles of the Jews in the comic book industry: it explored the mythology of comic hero and its impact Joe and Sam own struggles and personal journeys form the stories of the Escapist which in turn shape their lives. Sam struggling to come to terms with being Gay and Joe trying to rescue his family stuck in an increasingly bleak Nazi run Prague. It also explores the historical rip off the artists and writers of the period. Superman's creators did not come into the real money until the blockbuster Superman movies and a court case prised the money out of Hollywood's coffers. Historical characters from the period from the comic industry and the movie, art and political world some in and out of the story. The Escapist also draws on Joe Kavalier's training and experience of magic and Houdini type tricks and the impact this has on his life.

The writing is a tour deforce so that you hear, touch and smell the period. Each character has their own voice and even minor characters when they enter the story in a few paragraphs you have their back-story and motives seamlessly woven in so they become real characters. The point of view moves from character to character and no easy option or resolution is allowed as the story builds to the magic trick ending. Scenes are comic one minute and bitterly tragic the next as you join in the roller coaster of their lives. Yes I am going say it...if you only have the chance to read one book this year make it this one, you wont be disappointed.