2023-10-02
49 分钟American writer Michael Chabon talks about his 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. From Jewish mysticism to Houdini to the Golden Age of Comic Books and WWII, Chabon’s immersive novel deals with escape and transformation through the lives of two Jewish boys in New York. Josef Kavalier makes an impossible escape from Prague in 1939, leaving his whole family behind but convinced he’s going to find a way to get them out too. He arrives in New York to stay with his cousin Sammy Klayman, and together the boys cook up a superhero to rival Superman – both banking on their comic book creation, The Escapist, to transform their lives and those around them, which in part he does. Their first cover depicts The Escapist punching Hitler in the face, and they wage war on him in their pages, but the personal impact of WWII is painfully inevitable. The novel touches on the personal scars left by vast political upheaval, and the damaging constraints of being unable to love freely and live a true and authentic life. Chabon’s prose is perfectly crafted – sometimes lyrical, sometimes intensely witty, and occasionally painfully heartbreaking. (Picture: Michael Chabon. Photo credit: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images.)
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Welcome to the World Book Club podcast.
I'm Harriet Gilbert and this month we're talking about a modern American epic called the Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay.
It's a novel that encompasses, among much else, comic book superheroes, Jewish folklore and the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Nazis in World War II.
And here to answer questions about it from BBC listeners around the world is its multiply award winning author, Michael Chabon.
Michael, welcome to BBC World Book Club.
Thank you, Harriet.
I'm very happy to be here.
Now, I read somewhere, Michael, that you decided you wanted to be a writer at the age of 10 when you got really good marks for a story you wrote at school.
Is this myth or is it true?
That's the, that's the truth.
I.
I think I was 11.
Well, the teacher who gave Michael Chabon top marks for that was certainly prescient.
The schoolboy now has a fabulous literary career writing scripts, songs, short stories and above all, novels.
The latter including Wonder Boys, the Yiddish Policemen's union, and the book we're talking about today.
The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay has been described as Michael Chabon's masterwork.
A New York Times bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Since its publication in the year 2000, it's been translated into more than 25 languages.