The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

English language

Published July 10, 2001 by Turtleback.

ISBN:
978-0-613-55401-5
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(152 reviews)

The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City, where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin Sammy Klayman. Joe escaped from Prague with the help of his teacher Kornblum by hiding in a coffin along with the inanimate Golem of Prague, leaving the rest of his family, including his younger brother Thomas, behind. Besides having a shared interest in drawing, Sammy and Joe share several connections to Jewish stage magician Harry Houdini: Joe (like comics legend Jim Steranko) studied magic and escapology in Prague, which aided him in his departure from Europe, and Sammy is the son of the Mighty Molecule, a strongman on the vaudeville circuit.

When Sammy discovers Joe's artistic talent, Sammy gets Joe a job as an illustrator for a novelty products company, which, due to the recent success of Superman, is attempting to …

11 editions

From Am Graben to The Empire State Building

I am no fan of American comic books. Grown up men wearing swimming trunks over tight pants is ridiculous.

However, this has been a most enjoyable read! Prague, New York, Jews, Americans, Germans, war, comic books, masked heroes, friendship, love, struggle, mystery, American dream, Golem, escapistry...there's just about everything. And it is well mixed with a set of unique characters who are believable. Nice intro into the comic books industry of pre-war and post-war US + interesting language-wise, too.

I hope Sammy is happy in LA.

Review of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' on 'Storygraph'

I’ve read this book several times. This time I listened to the audiobook with my wife on a long car drive. It’s the sort of book that speaks for itself. I feel like anything I try to say about it only detracts from it. It is, on its own, a perfect thing. Just read it.

Sammy still refused to admit to himself—at that irrelevant, senatorial level of consciousness where the questions that desire has already answered are proposed and debated and tabled till later—that he was in love, or falling in love.

Review of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' on Goodreads

1) "Seventeen hours after he climbed into the coffin to lie with the empty vessel that once had been animate with the condensed hopes of Jewish Prague, Josef’s train approached the town of Oshmyany, on the border between Poland and Lithuania. The two national railway systems employed different gauges of track, and there was to be a sixty-minute delay as passengers and freight were shifted from the gleaming black Soviet-built express of Polish subjugation to the huffing, Czarist-era local of a tenuous Baltic liberty. The big Iosef Stalin-class locomotive eased all but silently into its berth and uttered a surprisingly sensitive, even rueful, sigh. Slowly, for the most part, as if unwilling to draw attention to themselves by an untoward display of eagerness or nerves, the passengers, a good many young men of an age with Josef Kavalier, dressed in the belted coats, knickers, and broad hats of Chasidim, …

Review of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' on 'Goodreads'

I see why this book was such a big deal. I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would. Not great women characters, but he makes up for it with mega research and an engaging story. I appreciated that there is constant tragedy in the background, but that the foreground was more the everyday helplessness that people feel in those situations. Life drives us more than we drive it.

Review of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' on 'Goodreads'

This book wasn't terrible, but it wasn't very good either. The whole gay thing felt like it came out of left field and wasn't very convincing or well done. It seemed out of place and odd even though I can understand why it was introduced. The whole escaping from societal bonds etc... Yeah yeah, I still don't care.

Review of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' on 'Goodreads'

Unfamiliar with Chabon and his work, I began this book with some amount of trepidation. As a geek, I've often found it a negative experience when mainstream literature intersects with genre fiction. You've got Margaret Atwood's prissy denials that she writes science fiction, and J.K. Rowling's irrational resistance to having her work labeled as fantasy. (While I haven't seen much commentary from Cormac McCarthy about the genre of The Road, his fans sure seem quick to disavow any relationship with Skiffy.) Sure, they'll happily play with SF and Fantasy's toys (i.e., themes and tropes), but when they get called out on the playground they deny any association with those two weird outcast kids. So I wasn't sure what to expect when presented with a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two comic book creators. The back of the book also made it sound like a fictionalized retelling of "two Jewish kids made …

Review of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' on 'Goodreads'

This book creeped up on me. It started slow and I kept dropping it to read something else. Then it gradually became mind-blowingly terrific. Chabon uses language in a way that is approachable, witty and literate. It's rare to find a book that is both fun and as full of imagery and symbolism as Kavalier and Clay. The 630 pages are filled with Chabon's unique voice on reality, escapism, narrative, imagination and family.

Of course, my typical Chabon comments still stand -- after reading a Chabon novel, I always feel as if it was written just for me to address things uniquely about my life. And I feel like Chabon is one of my closest friends, whom I know better than anyone else in the world. The universal popularity of Kavalier and Clay should disabuse me of these notions, but this is truly Chabon's unique gift.

The Amazing Adventures of …

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