内容简介
Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The AmazingAdventures of Kavalier and Clay, sprang from an early passion forthe derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books.Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollickingspirit of legendary adventures-from The Arabian Nights to AlexandreDumas to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories-in awonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor,cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy ofScheherazade's most tantalizing tales. They're an odd pair, to besure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerantphysician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, agray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticismas he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin,comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the CaucasusMountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and survivinghowever they can-as blades and thieves for hire and as practicedbamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money.No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they've left many afist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, andmade good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances.None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned intoservice as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire.Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-temperedyoung royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so willdemand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . .. not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supplythe former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to becomegenerals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is thatgetting there-along a path paved with warriors and whores, evilemperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and suchstuff as the grandest adventures are made of-will be much more thanhalf the fun. "From the Hardcover edition."