The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content)
A Novel
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4.3 • 378 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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
“It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World
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 • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
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.
Winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the New York Society Library Book Award
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This passionate, funny, Pulitzer Prize–winning slice of historical fiction pushed all our emotional buttons in the best way possible. In New York City in the days just before the United States entered into World War II, Jewish cousins Josef Kavalier and Samuel Klayman make it big in the comic book business by creating a Nazi-bashing superhero. Success has its pitfalls (like getting screwed by their publisher), but they’ve got bigger problems, with Joe desperate to rescue his family from Nazi-occupied Prague and Sammy struggling to keep his sexuality a secret. The story spins like a merry-go-round, providing as big a thrill ride as any Golden Age comic book. Michael Chabon effortlessly packs matters like Jewish identity, homophobia, wartime politics, and immigrant experiences into a novel that is, at heart, a masterful character study of two young men finding themselves while the world changes around them.
Customer Reviews
Long, but excellent story
If you'd enjoy a reliving of NYC in the 1930's and at the birth of comic books, this book is for you. It is brilliantly written, chock full of delicious metaphors and descriptions. Know that the story is involved and detailed, so be prepared for a long read. But ultimately worth it. Enjoy
Finally!
I don't understand what took so long. Clearly the author/publisher hates making money. I've been waiting to buy this for my iPad for nearly two years. I wonder how many people just "bought" the version that's been up on Pirate Bay, when they saw that this novel, universally recognized as one of the great American novels of the 21st century, was not for sale in any digital format. Even now, we have to wait for a June release?!? What good reason could they possibly have?
Loved it.
It took me a few chapters but once i was in the thick of it, it was a glorious adventure. First book in some time to make me cry out loud.