The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

You may know Michael Chabon for "Wonder Boys", which was also turned into a movie starring Tobey Maguire and Michael Douglas. I liked that book, but I liked Amazing Adventures even more. Chabon is a great writer of characters. He's one of the few who can really write believable characters in believable situations and make it interesting. But of course he provides himself some fuel in the setting for this novel.

Josef Kavalier and Samuel Klayman (later Clay) are cousins who are thrown together in Cleveland of the late thirties when Josef is sent away from his home in Czeckoslovakia, fleeing the purges of the Nazis. The pair become great friends and later collaborate on a new comic book together, inventing the character of The Escapist. If you know anything about comics, you know that Cleveland of the 30s and 40s was the place to be for comics, and the parallels to the creation of Superman are obvious (Jewish creators and all).

So naturally, one of the best story elements is that Kavalier and Clay get to run around in this exciting historic time (both in the world of comics and the real world) with the backdrops of the dawn of the Golden Age of comics and the outbreak of World War II. Of course with their Jewish roots, both are of great importance to these men.

They go through many turbulent times together but they always stand by each other, and that's what's best and most human about the book. It's the story of a great friendship in great times. Chabon could have written such a story in any time, but he chose an era which isn't exactly bound up in myth and legend as is the Revolution or Civil War. Plus which, there aren't a whole lot of non-fiction books (or at least popular ones) that even talk about the beginning of the comic-book industry. So that's at least two reasons to read it.

I just like Chabon's writing, so for me there's not much need to explain why you should read this book. Just do it!