In the winter of 1939, Josef Kavalier stumbles into his cousin Sammy's cramped bedroom in New York City, having escaped from Nazi-occupied Prague. They share a cigarette, and something begins: a friendship, and a partnership,that will last years. Between them they create the Escapist, a superhero who can escape from anyone and anything, who travels the world as an agent of the League of the Golden Key, helping others to escape from oppression and tyranny.

The theme could be predictable and hamfisted: in America, Josef becomes Joe, and Sammy Klayman has already become Sam Clay; they escape from their Jewish backgrounds into the mainstream American middle classes just as Joe has already escaped Prague. But escape in itself isn't the only theme - it's also the failures that surround it, the way Joe and Sammy, in a way very reminscent of Angels in America, fail to be anything but their Jewish, troubled selves. Sammy can't escape from his own sexuality, Joe can't escape from anything he's left behind. And as a counterpoint to the escapes, there are the absences left behind: the absence of Sammy's father, Joe living with the daily absence of his family, and later, the absence of Joe.

The language is lyrical and indulgently expansive, the moods perfectly evoked, but interestingly, there is nevertheless an appopriate comic-book aspect to the way the novel is written: events have a ka-pow! quality, especially in the earlier part of the novel. Joe bounces through a young lady's window, to screaming, Sammy kisses his his first love on the roof of a building with thunderstorms exploding around them, and later, Joe's adventures in the Antarctic cold, complete with grim madmen and sudden death have the overblown comic-book feel.

What to say, in the end? I wasn't sure what to take away from this novel. It is too heavy and sad to read once, but there's something beautiful and altering in it, and something compelling about the way history and religion are threaded masterfully throughout. It stays with you, with all its weight ( )

From the jacket copy: "It is New York City in 1939. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat to date: smuggling himself out of Nazi-occupied Prague. He is looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a collaborator to create the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Out of their fantasies, fears, and dreams, Joe and Sammy weave the legend of that unforgettable champion the Escapist. And inspired by the beautiful and elusive Rosa Saks, a woman who will be linked to both men by powerful ties of desire, love, and shame, they create the otherworldly mistress of the night, Luna Moth. As the shadow of Hitler falls across Europe and the world, the Golden Age of comic books has begun."This is a fantastic book. I was immediately pulled in after reading only a few pages. The fluid, dream-like writing gives the story and characters a vivid quality — I could picture the story like a movie in my mind. This book is rich in detail and tells an epic story. Brilliant writing. I've also read The Wonder Boys by this author which was also very good but this book is a big wow. I enjoyed it very much. ( )

While I appreciate the artistry and imagination displayed in this novel, I think I might have liked it better if it were about 200 pages shorter. ( )

This is the tale of two cousins, a cadre of superheroes, a war, and sacrifice. In 1939, young Joseph Kavalier employed his Houdini-inspired escape talents to smuggle himself out of Prague and into the United States. His cousin in Brooklyn, Sammy Clay, loves comic books and is awed by Joseph's natural artistic talents. Together the two young Jewish men toil to create the Escapist and Luna Moth, among others, while Joe dreams of saving his family from the devastation of Europe under Hitler. The beautiful Rosa Saks captures his heart, even as Sammy takes a very different path. Then on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, everything changes.

My feelings on this are mixed. It's beautifully written and captures the spirit of the time period. Joe, Sammy, Rosa, and the rest of the wide cast are alive and vibrant. I can see why Chabon won the Pulitzer for this work. However, sometimes he went into exhaustive detail. In the middle of a scene it will dive into a three page history of the comic book, or a particular setting that never returned. Sometimes the perspective changes were dizzying as well, diving into characters we only see for a few pages. It felt as though the author had so much good material, he had to make sure all of it made it into the finished product. Yes, it was interesting stuff, but an info dump is still an info dump and it detracted from the flow of the story. It's worth reading, but not keeping. ( )

Darrerament l’atzar m’està portant a enfrontar-me amb grans llibres. “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”, de Michael Chabon, és una gesta literària, un triomf de la lletra sobre els sentits i un assalt a la percepció en tots els fronts i en tota regla. La prosa de’n Michael Chabon és exhuberant i intuïtiva, capaç de trobar metàfores sorprenents i exactes i imatges espontànies i naturals. Balancejant-se continuament a la fina línia que separa el virtuosisme de l’artificiositat, en Chabon ha escrit una novel·la ambiciosa que aconsegueix capturar l’efecte del pas del temps en l’evolució d’uns personatges plens de vida i interesants. És un exemple d’argument ben planificat i ben dosificat, explicat en tercera persona, en un estil lliure indirecte potent i tirant al barroquisme i un colorisme pulp que alterna amb uns diàlegs vivaços deliciosos que només a un tram promitjada la novel·la perd una mica de gas, per recuperar-lo sense problemes més endavant.Gran novel·la. Extremadament satisfactòria. Sovint exagero, però passarà a formar part de la història de la literatura. ( )

Just. Gorgeous. In. Every. Way. ( )

Joe Kavalier escapes Poland as the Nazis invade. He arrives in the US and partners with his cousin, Sammy Clay, to create comic book heroes. In this expansive novel, the boys become men, finding and losing loves, struggling with the harsh realities of the war, and ultimately coming to terms with themselves.

This was not a fast read for me. Chabon's pace is measured as he creates the world about which he writes. (I found this true of the last Chabon book that I read - [Summerland] - as well.) But I never considered not continuing the journey with him. I felt like I came to know Joe and Sammy, and I trusted Chabon to tell me their story. Even when the plot twists might have led me to question other authors, Chabon managed to pull them off.

I was also impressed with Chabon's ability to weave so many threads together seamlessly. Other authors might hope to write a book about one of the subjects covered here - the comic book era, World War II, young loves, lost loves - but Chabon writes a book that is about all of these things. And he does it in a way that seems natural, almost easy. I highly recommend this book. ( )

I couldn't get into this book, and abandoned it.

“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon (published in 2000) won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001. It’s the wonderful story of Josef Kavalier who has escaped from Nazi-occupied Prague in 1939 and came to live with his 17-year old cousin Sam Klayman in Brooklyn. Joe is a talented artist and Sam (assuming the name Clay) a writer of adventure stories. Together they invent an anti-fascist superhero called the Escapist and have success in the burgeoning comic book industry. Joe also is a magician and was trained as an escape artist in the tradition of Harry Houdini by Bernard Kornblum in Prague. Kornblum smuggled Josef out of Europe in a casket containing the Prague golem dressed in the suit of a pituitary giant who was a patient of Joe’s physician father (conveniently an endocrinologist). In Jewish folklore, a golem is a living figure created from inanimate matter (in Prague, using clay from the banks of the Vltava River) that protects Jews from anti-Semitic attacks.

Early on, Joe and Sam are at a friend’s apartment and glimpse a beautiful girl (Rosa Saks) escaping down the stairwell dressed in nothing but a man’s overcoat. Later, at a party in Greenwich Village, Joe rescues the surrealist painter Salvatore Dali from an underwater experiment gone awry, and Rosa invites him upstairs to see her paintings. The two fall in love. Sam walks in just as they are kissing and Rosa asks Joe if Sam is a “fairy.” Rosa is the inspiration for another superhero of Kavalier and Clay, namely the Luna Moth. Tracy Bacon is an openly gay actor portraying the Escapist on the radio and comes to dinner at the apartment of Sam and his mother Ethel. A moment passes between Sam and his mother indicating that she also suspects that he is gay. Later, Bacon brings dinner to Sam at the Empire State Building, and they kiss for the first time just before lightning strikes the building. Tracy gets 4 tickets to the opening of Orson Welles’ movie “Citizen Kane” in 1941, and Orson Welles remarks that the Escapist is “great stuff.” Joe sometimes performs as a magician (“The Amazing Cavalieri”) at bar mitzvahs and there is a passage where the role of magic in the world is discussed:

“The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.”

While performing at a bar mitzvah, Joe gets the news that the ship carrying his little brother Tommy from Europe to the US has been sunk by a U-boat. Joe “escapes” and runs off to joins the Navy, hoping to kill some Germans. He leaves Rosa pregnant, and she and Sam enter a “marriage of convenience” to raise the baby who is named Thomas after Joe’s lost brother. There is a strange interlude in the Antarctic where Joe is stationed and comes face-to-face with a German geologist stationed nearby. Joe has tracked him down with intent to kill. The German fires first and wounds Joe, but then Joe sees the German as just another human being and attempts to throw his own gun away. Mistaking the gesture, the German jumps Joe and is fatally wounded as the gun goes off. Joe is discharged from the Navy and secretly finds his way back to New York where he takes up residence in the Empire State Building. He gets to know his son Tommy at a local magic shop where the two hang out. Tommy becomes aware of Joe’s intent to perform a stunt jumping off the Empire State Building and alerts the authorities by a letter to the editor of the NY Herald Tribune. Joe is only injured in the stunt. Meanwhile, Sam is subpoenaed to testify before the Kefauver senate hearings on the role of comics in juvenile delinquency (1954). The golem arrives (along with a lot of comics and other artifacts of the comic book era) for Joe at Sam and Rosa’s house. Tommy opens the box with the golem and sees that it has been reduced to dust. At the end of the book, Sam has decided to leave New York for Los Angeles while Tommy remains in the care of his biological parents.

Kavalier and Clay is a great novel about the rise of the comic book age in the shadow of Nazism and World War II. You don’t have to be a fan of comic books to enjoy this story, which has much to say about love and loss and the power of friendship. The duo of Kavalier and Clay evokes other great Jewish comic book teams such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (creators of Superman) and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. In the last line of the afterword to the book, Chabon expresses his indebtedness “in this and everything else I’ve ever written” to the late Jack Kirby. ( )

This was a couple afternoons well spent. It's kind of hard to describe how this book came across other than just a much-more-colorful-than-life slice of life. Basically, a comic book concept—golems and fights from secret Antarctic bases—morphed into a novel, all about escape and escapism, heroes and triumphs over adversity.

At 600+ pages, it's not a quick book but I never found it plodding. Chabon sucked me in right from the opening scenes of the meeting between Joe and Sam and I didn't want to put it down. Joe's adventures escaping from the Holocaust and the drama of the pair breaking into creating comic books make the first half of the book fly by.

The book does peter out a bit in the last quarter. What starts out as a novel about two people, full of adventure, somehow ends up a story about just one of them with the other fading off into the background and the story line becoming more prosaic. Still, I was hooked by that time and anxious to find out what happened and there are moments that definitely move the reader even then. The good absolutely outweighs the not-so-good.

It was more upbeat than the other Chabon book I've read (The Yiddish Policemen's Union); I won't say better, just very different.

I definitely recommend this. ( )

Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winner did not enthrall me nearly as much as Wonder Boys, I think mainly because it is a very long homage to the Golden Age of Comics and the artists and writers who created the form. The best written and most affecting section of the novel was the strange middle sequence in which one of the main characters, Kavalier, is sent to Antarctica after joining the Army during World War II, and there spends a surreal winter marked by senseless death, madness and obsession. By contrast, I found the sandwiching sections to be overlong and not nearly as emotionally wrenching, and the character of Sam Clay was not as real to me as his counterpart. The novel never ceased to be entertaining, though; it just didn’t have as much of an impact on me as it must have had on other readers. ( )

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.

When I was a kid, I was really into comic books, so I really enjoyed the first part of the book. When it drifted away from that in the second half, it got less interesting. ( )

I loved this book. It's long - not a plus for me - but I had no trouble getting through it. Sam and Joe and Rosa are great characters! I'll be thinking about this book for some time to come. ( )

Sam Clayman is a bit annoyed when his cousin from the old country, Josef Kavalier, shows up one night unannounced (at least to him). However, when he sees Joe's talent as an artist, his apprehension disappears and an idea sparks in Sam's head. Finally, he can make the comic books he's dreamed of. So begins the adventures of Kavalier and Clay and the Escapist...

This was a fantastic book. It really sucks you in right from the start. Chabon's talent as a writer is immense. Every sentence is gorgeous but subtly so. I didn't feel hit over the head like you sometimes can with authors ("look at my sentences, aren't they glorious???") - everything just flowed nicely and fit together well and was wonderfully written. The characters are brilliant as well. There was not a one that I felt was lacking. They were all interesting and well-developed and vivid. I think my favorite thing about the book was how seamlessly the story of Kavalier and Clay fit into actual history. I love when authors are able to insert real people and events without making it feel hokey or like a ploy. That ability is something I greatly admire. Chabon clearly did his research prior to writing this novel because every juxtaposition of fact and fiction seems effortless. I will definitely read more by Chabon. A book incredibly deserving of its Pulitzer. ( )

An incredible read - a marvellous subject (comic books in the 40s and 50s); an engaging cast of characters; and irresistable storytelling from Michael Chabon. Although not without its dark side, this is a joyous tale and recalls Wordsworth's words about the dawn of revolutionary times in Europe : "Bliss was it that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven". ( )

Just well-formed, in every way. ( )

I picked this up from the library after a friend mentioned in conversation that she had enjoyed it. I found I really liked Chabon's prose. He has a knack for metaphor that brings the characters and their emotions to life with the same vivid quality as the comic books that are so important to the story. As someone who enjoys reading a lot of fantasy, science fiction, what-have-you, I was struck by the theme of escapism in this novel. I also liked the thoughtful and interesting way Chabon weaves historical detail into the story, especially with regards to the comic book industry in the heyday of the superhero. I'd recommend this book to anyone and everyone who has ever entertained an escape fantasy of their own, even for a moment. ( )

"Author Michael Chabon (who, it seems, also wrote the book Wonder Boys) essentually treats us to an extensive history of the Golden Age, all seen through the eyes of these two young men who, as we are told through a plethora of referential comments, are later acknowledged as two of the greatest innovators of comic storytelling. Right up there with Eisner and Gaines.

Chabon takes some liberties with fact, but they're forgivable. His manipulation of the facts succeeds with creating a credible atmosphere for these two young men to find love and success. "

(Read more of this review.)

This book is to reading as yoga is to exercise - a work out that feels good. ( )

My visceral response to this book was "Wow." I finished it, put it down and needed to just think for a second to organize what I thought. I actually agree with many of the reviews I've read about it (which is somewhat rare): it's one of the best novels I've read recently and possibly in years. The problem for me is describing why I think that.

The descriptions Chabon conjures up are insanely well-done. This may sound trite, but I could feel the gritty sidewalks of Brooklyn, I could smell the offices of Empire Comics, and I could taste the slimy eggs Ethel made for Joe and Sammy. He doesn't use the hackneyed turns-of-phrases that you've seen a billion times and want to roll your eyes each time you see. The evocative images here made me feel like I could walk right into the diner where Joe and Sammy sat.

Chabon tells a story of love and loss (Joe's) and one of secrets and character (Sam's), all linked together by family ties and a girl (of course). These are such common themes, but they become fresh and radical in Chabon's capable hands. It could be seen as merely a "boy-meets-girl" story and a history lesson, or as an epic tale of identity, love, and loss.

Overall, I think what made this most powerful for me is how Chabon seemed to look at history, find what was there and then write it into a narrative. The universal motifs throughout history are the backdrop for this piece, which makes it more pertinent to each reader than any other book I've read. The validity of it's message on the human condition is proven by the very story it is telling.

I definitely recommend this to anyone with a willingness to look critically at the way history has played out. It can also be read as a fun romance/domestic narrative about two comic book writers over a 20 year period. Either way, it was wonderful! ( )

Okay. Every inch a Pulitzer. Really. In the future, high-school kids will read this book in school and LIKE it.

Why? First of all, it's intensely readable. The pages simply zip by. They zip by with the same earnestness and believability the whole way through, too-- unlike some of Chabon's other works, like [The Yiddish Policemen's Union], there's no moment of disillusionment, no instance where he steps out of the shell of his world and into another, sourer version of it. No, this book manages to skip from 30s Prague to the fetal stages of American mass media to WW2 Antarctica without so much as a dipped eyebrow. It's totally honest. The pages just flow through your head like words on air, and it's wonderful.

Secondly, it's very modern, in that the themes of this book are super-21st-century type things. Superheroes-- all of a sudden it's chic to talk superheroes in literature. This book was the best of all recent attempts. Secondly, it's kind of a microhistory, in the same style as those other popular mass-consuption history books that have been making good these days, like [Salt] or [Cod] or those many books about piracy or John Wilkes Booth or what have you: super-readable stuff with a cinematographic air that makes its readers feel like they're learning something as they go.

Thirdly, it's got that modern peel-back-the-layers look at history. World War Two? Hitler? Let's add a touch of crazy magic stuff to it. Golems! That's good! Also? Gay people in the early Forties. Not much has been about those guys, is there? Let's learn a bit about them, too. The book reeks of well-researched atmosphere, of the kind of things no one could possibly have learned about in history books. Navy bases on Antarctica. Magicians' culture in Eastern Europe. Escape artists. Gay dudes in the forties. Let's get it all in there-- that's the attitude a lot of writers of historical literature have these days. Nothing expected, nothing typical: the atmosphere has the same taste you would expect of it if you had got it fully mainstream, but it's also nutted and clotted with the stranger aspects of history and culture that you might never hear of otherwise. That's the modern novelist's take on history writing.

Fourthly, it has magnificent characters. There isn't a lot else to be said about that. And fifthly? The writing. Chabon is a genius.

Oh, Chabon. You do such wonderful things. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that you write exclusively about 'being Jewish,' though. You do it so well, but it's particularly when you do it THIS well that I start to wonder if your brilliance stems from something more than genius: from, perhaps, the earnestness of fervent self-insertion. Always jewish dudes in bisexual love triangles with weird nerdy underpinnings. You're always thrashing at the walls of genre, which I appreciate, but there's still a thematic unity to all your books that's becoming a bit monolithic in its impressiveness. It's when I read a book this excellent and this out-of-the-typical that I'm reminded how you've traded one restriction for another. Chabon is the guy who can write everything from a swords-and-horses adventure to a Holmes pastiche while still being taken seriously as a literary author-- but he's also the guy who can only, ONLY, write about male Jews. So it goes. He does it damn well. ( )

If you can only read one book out of this list, this is the one. It clearly demonstrates that Pulitzer Prizes aren't just little CrackerJack(tm) prizes handed out willy nilly. It is deeply touching, wonderfully written, and has characters you really really care about. Just a fantastic book all around. ( )

I have to admit, I had somewhat low expectations for this book. It had been recommended to me with rave reviews, but it seemed, based on the description, to be a dry read. I had expected a story about how two kids came up with a comic book and ran with it, but what I got was a page turner that took me from Prague to New York, to Antarctica, and places in between. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay didn’t only chronicle the lives of two Jewish cousins and how they achieved success in the comic book industry (although success for whom is certainly a question raised) but also the motivation behind their enterprise.

I don’t even know if I should start by discussing the story, which begins with the unlikely and unimaginable attempt to rescue the Jewish idol Golem out of Prague, which is soon to become an Nazi ghetto, or on the psychological motivators that made a one time magic/escape artist student a comic book artist. Josef Kavalier grows from a young man aspiring to be an escape artist to a troubled man who fights Nazis in the pages of comic books and gets in fights with Germans where ever he can find them. He changes throughout the book, but not necessarily for the better. His goals are to rescue his family, but after a tragic accident he leaves the family he has created in New York with his cousin Sam and girlfriend/would-be-fiancé Rosa to join the military. Read More ( )

I picked this up on a whim from the shelves of the bookstore where I worked, during my sophomore year of high school. It remains to this day my absolute favorite novel. ( )