Author Profile: Michael Chabon

Perhaps best known amongst comics fans as an Eisner Award Winner for his book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon has been writing novels and short stories (and the occasional movie!) since 1988, when he wrote Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Since then, one of his books, Wonder Boys, has been turned into a movie starring Michael Douglas, and he’s consulted on scripts for Spiderman 2, X-Men, and The Fantastic Four. Listed here are some of our favorites:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Two cousins with a pulp sensibility form an unlikely friendship and decide to draw a comic book about The Escapist, who breaks taboos and deals deathly blows to Hitler in this award-winning novel.

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Also available as E-Audiobook

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

Described by Publisher's Weekly as "a murder-mystery speculative-history Jewish-identity noir chess thriller," this alternate-history novel is Chabon's newest release to date. His hero is a much hung-over detective, stuck in a Jewish settlement in Alaska, with the mystery of a corpse in a hotel to solve and lots of brandy to drink.

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Wonder Boys

Writer's block is the worst thing that can happen to a writer. The protagonist in this tale is also middle-aged, unhappy, and a mess. What's the worst that could happen in one weekend? The lead character, Grady Tripp, finds out.

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Summerland

Chabon's first (and only) novel for young adults, this work takes us into a modern-day, American other world, much like Narnia or Wonderland. A young boy, who's really bad at baseball, is called upon to save the faeries of Summerland from the destructive Coyote and his band of warriors. Can 11-year-old Ethan do it?

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Werewolves in Their Youth (short stories)

In his second short-story collection, Chabon visits the aftermath of rape, what happens when boys playing at superheroes goes a little too far, and a fictional author's pulp horror tales (an author he created in the aforementioned "Wonder Boys" writes the last story in the book!) Wholly original, as are all of Chabon's work, and a great place to start if you're not sure you'll like his style.

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Thanks to IC for the author suggestion!