Gentlemen of the Road A Tale of Adventure

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 adventuresfrom The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser storiesin 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. 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 canas 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. 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 therealong a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made ofwill be much more than half the fun. From the Hardcover edition.

Michael Chabon is the author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; Wonder Boys, which was made into a critically acclaimed film; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize; The Final Solution: A Story of Detection; and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. He is also the author of two short-story collections and a young adult novel, Summerland. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

From the Hardcover edition.

List of Illustrations	p. xv
On Discord Arising from the Excessive Love of a Hat	p. 3
On Payment-and Trouble, Its Inevitable Gratuity	p. 16
On the Burdens and Cruelties of the Road	p. 30
On the Substitution of One Angel, and One Cause, for Another	p. 43
On the Observance of the Fourth Commandment Among Horse Thieves	p. 56
On Some Peculiarities in the Trading Practices of Northmen	p. 68
On the Seizing of a Low Moment	p. 79
On a Niceness of Moral Discernment Uncommon Among Gentlemen of the Road	p. 91
On Anxieties Arising from the Impermissibility, However Unreasonable, of an Elephant's Rounding Out a Prayer Quorum	p. 105
On the Belated Repayment of the Gift of a Pear	p. 119
On the Unforeseen and Annoying Resemblance of a Bek's Life to an Ill-played Game of Shatranj	p. 132
On a Consignment of Flesh	p. 146
On Swimming to the Library at the Heart of the World	p. 157
On the Melancholy Duty of Soldiers to Contend with the Messes Left by Kings	p. 170
On Following the Road to One's Destiny, with the Usual Intrusions of Violence and Grace	p. 182
Afterword	p. 197
A Note on the Khazars	p. 205
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Gentlemen of the Road A Tale of Adventure [title page only]

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Author Biography

Table of Contents

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