Gentlemen of the Road » (~)

Although his novels and short stories have varied in setting -- from the 1940s New York of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay to the contemporary Pittsburgh of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh -- all of Michael Chabon s witty and understated books feature memorable, deftly-drawn characters trying to find their place in the world.

Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures–from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories–in a wonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor, cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy of Scheherazade’s most tantalizing tales.

They’re an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can–as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they’ve left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances.

None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . . . not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there–along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of–will be much more than half the fun.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Barnes & Noble Review

As a kid, Michael Chabon must have read books by Alexandre Dumas like other kids his age ate Twinkies -- with one difference: the sugar buzz from The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo didn't dissolve in his bloodstream but fully saturated his impressionable young brain so that years later, even after he'd topped the bestseller lists and won the Pulitzer Prize, Chabon would still get a happy rush of blood-tingle from writing plot-driven adventure stories that arrive on bookshelves like much-needed antidotes to the modern trend of morose, nihilistic, cynical fiction.

List of Illustrations xv Chapter 1 On Discord Arising from the Excessive Love of a Hat 3 Chapter 2 On Payment-and Trouble, Its Inevitable Gratuity 16 Chapter 3 On the Burdens and Cruelties of the Road 30 Chapter 4 On the Substitution of One Angel, and One Cause, for Another 43 Chapter 5 On the Observance of the Fourth Commandment Among Horse Thieves 56 Chapter 6 On Some Peculiarities in the Trading Practices of Northmen 68 Chapter 7 On the Seizing of a Low Moment 79 Chapter 8 On a Niceness of Moral Discernment Uncommon Among Gentlemen of the Road 91 Chapter 9 On Anxieties Arising from the Impermissibility, However Unreasonable, of an Elephant's Rounding Out a Prayer Quorum 105 Chapter 10 On the Belated Repayment of the Gift of a Pear 119 Chapter 11 On the Unforeseen and Annoying Resemblance of a Bek's Life to an Ill-played Game of Shatranj 132 Chapter 12 On a Consignment of Flesh 146 Chapter 13 On Swimming to the Library at the Heart of the World 157 Chapter 14 On the Melancholy Duty of Soldiers to Contend with the Messes Left by Kings 170 Chapter 15 On Following the Road to One's Destiny, with the Usual Intrusions of Violence and Grace 182 Afterword 197 A Note on the Khazars 205