A Amazing Escapade of Kavalier & Clay is a 2000 novel by Michael Chabon. It won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001, and was nominated for the 2000 National Book Critics Circle and PEN/Faulkner awards.

the novel follows a lasts of the title characters, a Czech artist and the Brooklyn writer—both Jewish—before, during, & when World War II. Kavalier & Clay be major numbers in the nascent comics industry during its "Golden Age"; many cases in a novel come according to the experiences of actual comic-book creators including Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Joe Simon, Will Eisner, and Jim Steranko. More historical numbers play bit part, including Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, and Fredric Wertham.

a major theme inside the novel is the large role of Jewish writers & creative person in non exclusively the comic-book field, however fantasy fiction & American pop culture in general. Besides a pragmatical reasons for this (e.g., numerous Jewish illustrators ended higher working withinside comedian books because it were denied act in thomas more "respectable" fields), Chabon suggests that comedian & pulp fiction were crucibles for the unambiguously U.s. mythology that allowed outcasts & immigrants to dream of valorousness, & that an aspect of Jewish tradition happened to healthy swell sustaining this mythology; a novel's quip, from either Might Eisner, describes this aspect when "impossible solutions for insoluble problems".

Both of Chabon's promulgated short stories consist of poop that was apparently written for the novel but not involved: "The Return of the Amazing Cavalieri" (inside ''McSweeney's Quarterly, 2001) and "Breakfast in the Wreck" (in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2004). The film adaptation is planned, and Dark Horse Comics has published several Escapist comics based on a superhero stories described in the novel, part written by Chabon.

A novel begins around 1939 with the arrival of Josef Kavalier as a refugee inside New York City, where he comes to accept his 17-month-old full cousin Sammy Klayman. Besides with the divided up interest inside drawing, them come besides fans of the Jewish stage magician Harry Houdini, and part many modems to Houdini: Kavalier (prefer Steranko) has actually studied escapology, which aided him in his departure from either Europe, & Klayman is the boy of the Mighty Molecule, the strongman on the vaudeville circuit.

Klayman gets Kavalier the job as an illustrator for the novelty products company which, due to the recent profits of Superman, is attempting to get into a comic-book business. Renaming himself Sam Clay, Klayman starts writing heroic tale, & them recruit many more Brooklyn teen to create Amazing Midget Radio Comics'' (known as to promote one of a company's novelty things). A magazine features their character a Wishful thinker, an anti-fascist superhero who combines traits of (among others) Harry Houdini, Batman, the Phantom, and the Scarlet Pimpernel; the Dreamer becomes hugely popular, however, when typically happens, the writers & creative person make their way a minimum part of the publisher's profits. Kavalier & Clay come slow to understand that it is existence exploited, when it keep around personal concerns: Kavalier is trying to rescue his personal from either a Nazis, and has fallen smitten sustaining the bohemian girl with her have artistic aspirations, when Clay is researching the secret homosexual life.

Kavalier leaves his pregnant would become-fiancee & Clay whilst, caused by hate of the Nazis, he enlists in the Navy. When the touching-dying dangerous undertaking around Antarctica, he returns as a psychologically damaged hermit to Up to date York; a remainder of a novel follows the trio characters' tries to reconstitute the personal, & to buy the freshly originative counsel for comedian.