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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>
