Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure

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Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure

by Michael Chabon, Gary Gianni (Illustrator)

3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 · rating details · 7,206 ratings · 1,152 reviews

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 Gr...more 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.

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.

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.(less)

Hardcover, 204 pages

Published December 18th 2008 by Del Rey (first published 2007)

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Nov 20, 2007 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

A rollicking book. If any book deserves the word 'rollicking', this is it. This adventure yarn draws heavily and with much love from Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and Robert E. Howard, among others. While some readers may wonder 'what's the point?', the reader who does not look for a point to everything will enjoy the ride immensely.

8 likes · like · see review

May 29, 2008 Elizabeth added it · review of another edition

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Tim

Shelves: chocolate-club

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

3 likes · like · see review

Dec 30, 2009 Osho rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

First published serially in The New York Times, this short, picaresque novel follows an unlikely pair of Jewish mercenaries as they become embroiled in the power struggles of the Khazar. Readers from Christian backgrounds may not appreciate how refreshing it is to read a story in which all the main characters are Jewish and are doing something beyond, well, being Jewish. To have the assumption of characters' Christianity replaced by the assumption of their Judaism is a pleasure, and possibly mor...more

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Dec 06, 2008 Seizure Romero rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, borrowed

I stole this book from my friend Krystal. Ok, not so much stole as co-opted for a few days. I see her at the coffee shop and she shows me the book she just started reading. She then starts talking to other people. Having left my book at home in a rare moment of bibliotardedness, I start reading hers. She wanders off to run errands nearby and by the time she comes back I'm a third of the way into it. She gathers her things to go and tells me, "Go ahead and finish it. I've got another book."

*sniff...more

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Nov 06, 2007 lia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Michael Chabon has been making it hard for me lately, to love him in the way I'm used to doing. The Yiddish Policeman's Union was unfinishable for me, but I'm going to try again. This is something totally different however, a swashbuckling adventure story full of Turks, caravans, princes in disguise, swordfights and ruffians of many degree. He says in the afterward that he wanted to name the book "Jews With Swords" but didn't get a lot of positive feedback on that. But it made me like the book m...more

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Dec 25, 2011 Blake Charlton rated it 3 of 5 stars

in his apology...er...afterward to this quick-witted and enjoyable historical adventure story, chabon discloses that the original working title was 'jews with swords.' (personally, i think that would have been a pretty kick ass title.) chabon goes on to explain how it came to be that he, a capital-L-literature-author, ended up writing a story that involved swords. unintentionally it smacks of condescension, of a slight embarrassment of what it was trying to be. that was my only significant compl...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it 2 of 5 stars

The marriage of a tale of legend to a story of adventure ends in a literary divorce.

Chabon attempted to invoke a mini-mythology around his simple story about bandits. Unfortunately the technique distanced the reader from the action. Maybe that was his intention. I'm guessing it wasn't, having heard an interview with Chabon in which he admitted this was his first attempt at such a story and he didn't feel he knew what he was doing.

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Oct 11, 2011 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2011, genre

Gentlemen of the Road is a truly enjoyable tale of sword and horse-ery. It follows the fortunes of two “Jews with swords,” Amram and Zelikman, as they become entangled in events larger than their standard fare of swindling and banditry. After a routine scam, they are approached by a stranger and asked to escort the last remaining member of the usurped royal family of the Khazar’s – it goes downhill from there for the protagonists. Killing, sneaking, disguises, brothels, mass killings, assassinat...more Gentlemen of the Road is a truly enjoyable tale of sword and horse-ery. It follows the fortunes of two “Jews with swords,” Amram and Zelikman, as they become entangled in events larger than their standard fare of swindling and banditry. After a routine scam, they are approached by a stranger and asked to escort the last remaining member of the usurped royal family of the Khazar’s – it goes downhill from there for the protagonists. Killing, sneaking, disguises, brothels, mass killings, assassinations, and elephants are just a few things that can be found on these pages.

Let it be known that Chabon has a way with words. The language is flowery and descriptive, evoking near perfect imagery in many instances. I can see how it may be a deterrent for many readers though – the language can be thick, using a lot of perhaps obscure vocabulary to firmly set it in its period. That being said, while the novel is descriptive, the story moves quickly – at only 200 pages it is surprising how much happens. Chabon does not waste time describing that which is unnecessary.

I really loved the setting of Gentlemen of the Road. Set before the turn of the first millennium, the novel’s action is set mainly in what would be Southwest Russia on modern maps. Not a lot of time is spent describing the locales, but the reader is given a great sense of it through the language, the people met and described, and the travels of the gentlemen.

The chapters are loosely Point-of-view, generally following the action from one person’s perspective with some exceptions. The POVs are not always our protagonists either – which, for me, was one of the best aspects of the book. This allowed for some good character development for such a short work – there is so much history between Amram and Zelikman and each has an interesting past that the reader is told little of.

I am being too positive, so here is a list of some of my issues with the book: time spent brooding – one or two characters are a little too sullen for my tastes; brevity – the book is short and I wish it wasn’t, I could read this story for at least another 234 pages; dei ex machina – a lot of these going on and though necessary to move the story forward, there are a lot of happy/unhappy coincidences here (if I were to write an essay about it, I would entitle it “Of all the brothels in all the city” or “Elephants: woman’s best friend” or maybe “Who let that horse in”).

I really recommend this book. It as an engaging adventure story, with a few helpings of humour, tragedy, and an axe named “mother-defiler”.
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Feb 05, 2009 Katya Zelevinsky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

In the afterword for this book, Michael Chabon said that his working, half tongue-in-cheek title for the book was Jews With Swords, and that every time he told this title to his friends, they always laughed, picturing in their heads someone who looked like Woody Allen waving a sword around. This book feels like a response to all those people who laughed at the title, and a warning against the danger of stereotyping a whole people in such a way -- it's a dashing tale of swashbuckling and adventur...more

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Sep 29, 2008 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like elephants- but only kind of

Part I of the review:
“I want to do nothing. Nothing. Okay, maybe I’ll read a book. Hmm… Gentleman of the Road, by Michael Chabon. Well, I really liked Kavalier and Clay. And I liked Yiddish Policeman’s Union. And this is a short book- maybe I’ll just read this book, and work myself out of this 5 month funk I’ve been in…
… For numberless years a myna had astounded travelers to the caravansary with its ability to spew indecencies in ten languages, and before the fight broke out everyone assumed th...more Part I of the review:
“I want to do nothing. Nothing. Okay, maybe I’ll read a book. Hmm… Gentleman of the Road, by Michael Chabon. Well, I really liked Kavalier and Clay. And I liked Yiddish Policeman’s Union. And this is a short book- maybe I’ll just read this book, and work myself out of this 5 month funk I’ve been in…
… For numberless years a myna had astounded travelers to the caravansary with its ability to spew indecencies in ten languages, and before the fight broke out everyone assumed the old blue-tongued devil on its perch by the fireplace was the one who maligned the giant African with such foulness and verve.

What the hell is a ‘myna’? What’s a ‘caravansary’? Dammit- I’m reading a Michael Chabon book! Which means words I’ve never heard and… yep, there they are- Zelikman- funny Jewish names. Sigh… I want to do nothing… nothing… I really don’t even want to read this book. I don’t want to do anything. Nothing. NOTHING EVER AGAIN!”

Part II of the review:
So, yes, I have finally read this book. Okay- so I guess this was the story that Michael Chabon published over a period of time through the New York Times. I remember hearing about this and thinking, "I'd like to read that..." but it turns out a full subscription to the New York Times would cost me $350, or $245 for just weekends, and let's face it- I'm not going to pay a few hundred dollars for "All the news that's fit to print" when I can get all that same news (all the news that's fit to upload into a web browser?) for free (or for whatever internet costs- it should be free). Anyway- but this isn't about how little I care about the "paper of record" and their fancy crossword puzzles- and how I’d probably be smarter if I read that particular paper- but New York doesn’t need the ego boost of having me read their paper- this is about how I muddled through the 193 pages of Gentleman of the Road, and king of enjoyed myself while doing it.
It does read like a serialized story- which isn’t a bad thing, but every chapter did end with that cliffhanger type of feeling… or did it?

Part III of the book review.
Overall- I didn’t feel the same connections with these characters as I did with Chabon’s other characters in his other novels- but then again, he only had 200 pages to work with (whereas his other books have 400 plus pages to cram full of words that I have to look up and names that I pronounce phonetically in my head) but I still enjoyed myself reading the book. It was apparently steeped in historic Jewish culture- maybe- I wouldn’t know. There was a big deal about elephants- though- it wasn’t really a big deal. Overall I think it’s a pretty good quick read. It brought me out of my five-month-long funk. Or did it?

Part IV
I’ll say this: The ending was so-so. There was all this build-up till the end, and then it just sort of ended. It made me wonder if it being published in a newspaper had anything to do with the ending. And then there’s this weird afterward by Michael Chabon. In the afterward Chabon discusses why he wrote the book (he’s experimenting with different formats?) and then he talks about going on adventures, and there’s this big to do about ‘Jews with swords’ and then he says something that almost sounds like a backhanded compliment about people not reading books anymore… or people reading books instead of carrying swords as a way of escapism, or something like that. I could have misunderstood what he was saying, but still Dude- I just bought your freaking $22 dollar book (which is still a way better deal than the $350 newspaper subscription) stop lecturing me about being afraid of going on adventure with swords and what not. Let’s just all of us read a comic book and relax.
(less)

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Mar 15, 2008 Sophia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008, mainstreamfiction, own

I love Chabon's writing; his characters are so real they breathe, his prose is beautiful, and he wraps you in the blanket of the magnificent tale he weaves. Unfortunately, that blanket is often so tangled even he has a hard time getting out of it. In other words, his endings drive me nuts.

At first I thought this one would be a change, since it's shorter and the story is smaller in scope. The plot and style is well-suited to him too, as it concerns the travels of two ninth century knights errant...more

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Dec 29, 2007 Joaquin rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was just a plain old fun book to read. The writing was excellent - very clear and evocative without being overly pretentious or here-let-me-get-my-dictionary-y. There were several times when I laughed out loud or reread a passage aloud to myself or my wife just to hear the words. In fact, I think this would be a perfect book to read aloud to or with your honey. The story itself, like the title suggests, was a standard 'two dudes go wandering and adventure/hilarity ensues.' This is an excell...more

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Dec 04, 2007 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-novels

Reading this directly after Lawrence Block's "Tanner's Twelve Swingers" was quite eye-opening. Unlike Block, who relied on flimsy flash and sex to barrel through his story, Chabon created a complex world for his two Jews with swords - a French Jew (before there was a France) who looks like a scarecrow and a giant Abyssinian black Jew who wields a battle ax called Motherfucker. Sure, it sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but with this little novel, Chabon achieves what only the best fantasy storie...more Reading this directly after Lawrence Block's "Tanner's Twelve Swingers" was quite eye-opening. Unlike Block, who relied on flimsy flash and sex to barrel through his story, Chabon created a complex world for his two Jews with swords - a French Jew (before there was a France) who looks like a scarecrow and a giant Abyssinian black Jew who wields a battle ax called Motherfucker. Sure, it sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but with this little novel, Chabon achieves what only the best fantasy stories can. His world, though immensely removed from our own (I mean, Jews with swords, how crazy can you get? (Chabon makes sure to address the anomaly in his Afterword)), seems much more real than much naturalism that purports to show modern life as it exists.

The two gentlemen of the road - Zelikman and Amram - take on a task - a quest, if you will - that rewards them less monetarily than politically, and perhaps morally - when they set out to escort a young royal to his grandfather's fortress and out of the way of the new bek's (king's) mercenaries.

The twists and turns of Chabon's tale delight in a rather light manner. This young royal isn't what he at first seems. The relationship between the two unorthodox Jews proves to be comically warm and the political climate of the Near East is much more interesting and varied than one would have thought. Chabon does a good job of showing that ages old fault line where the three masses of men - Christians, Jews, and Muslims - smash into each other with devastating consequences - not that Chabon delves too much into the conflict between the religions, but the obvious rifts are evident.

One of the more interesting political devices in the novel is the structure of the government of Atil - a great massive city-state split down the middle between the Jews and the Muslims - in which the bek rules over the lives of his subjects, but the kagan - a man who lives in a fortress on an island in the delta of Atil and never sees another soul except for his blind servant - tells the bek what to do. Sounds like Cheney and Bush.

A land of elephants, caravans, silk embroidered head gear, daggers, whores (love the whorehouse scenes), and Vikings makes this little book burst. A fun, fun read.(less)

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Aug 30, 2007 vladimir rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sword and sorcery fans; fans pulp adventure novels; swashbuckling in all its forms..

I'm rewriting my review now that the book has finally come out (read it in August as an advance); I knew it would divide fans and perplex even more.

"Gentlemen of the Road" draws from what some might call 'pulp' fiction styles, or in other cases 'adventure fiction'. The language is very much a product of these styles of writing; frankly, prose was more complex back then (not that I'm saying it was better, but it was definitely different)-- longer sentences, oddly constructed, and florid.
If you h...more

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Nov 30, 2007 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: you

Shelves: 2007reads, theroad

Okay, this book was f****** great. And for those of you who are a little slow those asterisks stand for ucking. I would give it 6 stars if I could.
Really though, this book was just excently written. It was fun, had great character development (which I think was the main thing lacking in Chabon's last novella experiment, The Final Solution), and of course a great story with unexpected turns and an excellent ending.
I've seen that some other people have written lesser reviews and I'm not sure why....more

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Sep 13, 2012 Travis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy, manly-literature

Chabon uses a lot of fancy language and literary flourishes to hide the fact this is basically a very old fashioned fantasy story about two guys with swords that get mixed up with evil rulers, daring rescues and lots of dashing sword play.
The kind of stuff Fritz Lieber made a career of.

The two leads are fun characters, the action is exciting, there's a nice mix of humor, history and adventure and some nice twists on fantasy cliches.

I would advise you not to read the author's note as it is a feeb...more

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Aug 07, 2008 Tim Lepczyk rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, mediocre-as-a-frozen-pizza, not-as-good-as-everyone-says

I didn't want to believe the negative reviews when I started this book. I'm a big fan of Michael Chabon and have been impressed with his writing. However, this novel seems to tread the line of wanting to be literary fiction or pulp adventure fiction as a result it fails at both.

The novel is bland and empty. Things happen and there is a fast pace at times, but I didn't care. That's the first for a Chabon novel. I don't care about any characters or what happens to them.

So, leave this one on the sh...more

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Nov 27, 2007 Stephanie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I should mark this book "partially read and discarded." I was bored with this so-called adventure story. It was a disappointment, considering that I have like most of Chabon's other works, including Summerland. I can see the model of the boy's adventure story that Chabon is trying to adhere to, but the story lacks the drama and the pacing that make such a story exciting to read. Ostensibly those elements are there -- but it didn't grab me. This might be what happens when a writer rushes off a bo...more

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Jun 13, 2009 Jeremy Allan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-fiction

Rich setting, but in the end, all flash, no fire. Chabon is brave for trying an adventure novel, but I'd say that's the best extent of the adventure.

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Dec 27, 2007 Kellan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Read the books for the afterwords. The book is amusing, but slight. Chabon's meditations in the afterwords on the nature of adventure, identity, and the writing process are worth the price of admission. (though his protests as "I'm not a genre fiction writer, no really" are amusingly flimsy)

Additionally this is a book which would be greatly enhanced by being a hyperlinked document, backed by a rich wikipedia-esque data store. Rather then suffer I think the option to dig deeper into these culture...more

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Jan 02, 2008 James rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of chabon or jews with swords

It took a while to get into this book--I feel like I have a pretty strong vocabulary, but I had to go to the dictionary every other page at first. However, it became clear that this was not because I'm not amazingly smart (obviously) but rather because Chabon kept drawing on archaic terms relating to the governments, games, and weapons of 10th century muslims...once google helped me figure out what the hell beks, shatranj, and kagans were, I found a very entertaining little story. If you have re...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Gentlemen of the Road, compared by the New York Times Book Review to "the stories found in 19th-century dime novels and the fantastic escapades invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard," was first published in serial form in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Critics quickly pointed out the telltale signs of the multiple-installment format: new characters, settings, and plot twists in every chapter, which result in a fast, sometimes confusing, pace. Chabon's lush, memorable prose s

...more

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Dec 02, 2007 Evan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Charming tale of adventure, all the promise of a serialized penny dreadful fulfilled by a first rate writer like Chabon. For such a short piece, I fell in love with the characters.

Marred by a curiously hostile afterward which chastises the reader for thinking that adventure tales are frivolous, though such readers are the least likely to reach the end of the book. It is clear that Chabon has moved on from the "late twentieth century realism genre" as he calls it, and that's a good thing.

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Apr 25, 2013 Bjorn rated it 2 of 5 stars

You know, a book this short, with a setting this fascinating, by an author I actually thought I liked... has no business, none whatsoever, being this boring.

Chabon sets out to write a classic swashbuckling adventure set in the only Jewish kingdom to exist between the fall of Jerusalem and the rise of modern Israel; this is a world of constant movement, trade routes, invasions and religious wars, scattering people of all creeds and nations (ridiculously so - there's hardly a single nationality he...more You know, a book this short, with a setting this fascinating, by an author I actually thought I liked... has no business, none whatsoever, being this boring.

Chabon sets out to write a classic swashbuckling adventure set in the only Jewish kingdom to exist between the fall of Jerusalem and the rise of modern Israel; this is a world of constant movement, trade routes, invasions and religious wars, scattering people of all creeds and nations (ridiculously so - there's hardly a single nationality here that seems to come in pairs; it's always one Bulgar, one Sorb, one Frank, etc.) And in the middle of this he sticks two Jewish adventurers, a Frank and an African, just looking to make a quick dinar and finding themselves caught up in big politics between Arabs, Vikings, Khazars and everyone else. (The original title was Jews With Swords.)

Sounds interesting? It should be. Making it boring is a hell of a feat, but Chabon pulls it off. I'm not sure exactly what happened; I mean, I loved Kavalier and Clay and I've heard very good things about Wonder Boys and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and then the next Chabon I pick up is this - which might pass for one of those "young adult" adventure books if it weren't for the fact that Chabon seems to want to deliberately complicate things by writing in the most annoying and roundabout manner he possibly can. I realise this is probably an attempt to make it sound like a classic boys' adventure novel (whether that is really a style worthy of imitating faithfully is another question), but seriously; why is a 21st century American, writing an adventure set in 10th century Azerbaijan, trying to write in 19th century English?

Then there's the plot, which could have been interesting if it had been developed into something more than just a series of fight scenes, but as it is doesn't even work properly as an adventure. You've got such an interesting idea here, man, use it! There are fascinating bits of history - both political and philosophical - woven into this, but it just makes it all the more frustrating when he skips past it to repeat yet again how his lead characters look, what weapons they carry, etc, without making us care what happens to them or the plot they're involved in; are we supposed to cheer for the insufferably brattish princess, or the tough ruler, or... what? Between that and the stilted language, Chabon too often comes across as a 15-year-old with a brand new thesaurus for big words and access to Wikipedia for the historical bits.

Still, I'll give it a weak two stars. Because truth is, Gentlemen of the Road makes me want to read more. It makes me want to read Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars. It makes me want to re-read Eco's Baudolino. It makes me want to read any number of central Asian authors I haven't yet heard of. It makes me want to read up on history. But it also makes me want to push the other Chabons I have to the back of the TBR pile. It's not that he's not talented, because he is, and there are brief moments when you can spot it here. No, the big problem is that he seems to be deliberately writing below his capacity, as if he's decided that the genre he's chosen cannot be more than shallow, formulaic adventurism (I happen to think he's wrong, and I'll smack anyone who disagrees with 512 pages of Baudolino) and then letting that dictate what he does with it. As if he knows it's a lesser work, ruined by its own lack of ambition, and is still happy with that. Well, I'm not. (less)

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Apr 16, 2013 Lance Catedral rated it 4 of 5 stars

The gentlemen of the road are two wanderers in AD 950. Two men couldn't be too different: Zelikman the Jew is pale and wiry; Amram the Abyssinian is dark and huge. The first chapter begins with a scene in the caravansary. They pretend like they're killing each other, to the excitement of the crowd who gives outrageous bets as to who wins. Until one of them gets killed, of course--or so they like it to appear--in which case they will have collected all the money they need before anybody finds out...more The gentlemen of the road are two wanderers in AD 950. Two men couldn't be too different: Zelikman the Jew is pale and wiry; Amram the Abyssinian is dark and huge. The first chapter begins with a scene in the caravansary. They pretend like they're killing each other, to the excitement of the crowd who gives outrageous bets as to who wins. Until one of them gets killed, of course--or so they like it to appear--in which case they will have collected all the money they need before anybody finds out the truth. The fight is but a show.

Their lives take a different turn when they meet Faruq, a young Khazar prince whose throne has been usurped by his father's political enemy. The boy has a foul mouth, has outrageous demands, and is so stubborn they have to bound him. What do Zelikman and Amram do with him? They will take him back to his homeland where they will be rewarded with gold. Faruq has plans to take revenge against the usurper Buljan, but the gentlemen of the road don't know that yet: they will play a major part in his re-institution as the bek of the Khazars.

The battles, elephants, whores, and people groups they meet are all interesting, like watching an epic film. But what fascinates me most is the fact that Zelikman is a physician, descended from a family of Frankish healers. He uses a lancet, an otherwise funny instrument, both to kill and heal. He has carefully made potions that put his enemies to sleep. He has balms and ointments to bring about analgesia. And he's perennially depressed and solitary. Even his appearance shows it: black hat, black cloak, long hair.

Michael Chabon uses archaic terms, so I had to have my dictionary beside me to get the full picture. Gentlemen of the Road is a short book with lots of things happening in it, some of them really funny, showing Chabon's diligence in researching for material, and displaying the results of his impressive reading habits. All great writers are great readers, after all.

In the book's afterword, Chabon admits that there is incongruity in this novel and his previous New Yorker-ish works--the literary, serious types of stories about divorce and family life and Pittsburgh. But he gives the reason: he has "gone off in search of a little adventure." And what an adventurous, worthwhile reading experience it has been.(less)

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Mar 30, 2013 Tom Emanuel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I'm not familiar with Michael Chabon's other writings, but this rousing little adventure has piqued my interest, even if it's not representative of his work. Gentlemen of the Road follows the adventures of Zelikman and Amram, Jewish adventurers and con men of Frankish and Abyssinian ancestry, respectively, as they become entangled in a plot to return the young, foulmouthed Prince Filaq to the war throne of Khazaria, a medieval Jewish kingdom in the region of the Caspian Sea. Chabon's delightfull...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Warwick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, azerbaijan, caucasus

I thought this was great fun. The writing has been criticised as rather over-wrought – well, it is certainly a little baroque but Chabon's tongue is firmly in his cheek, and there is a wittiness to his descriptions which makes me very willing to go along for the ride. Besides, the sentences may be elaborate, but they are always interesting, utterly free from cliché, and often strange and beautiful:

Then, as if overhearing and taking pity on the maudlin trend of his thoughts, the wind carried to h...more

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Dec 11, 2012 katie rated it 3 of 5 stars

this book originally appeared in installments in the new york magazine, and i’m glad they bound it all together so andy could give it to me as a present and i could read it. at first i had to read almost every sentence multiple times to understand what he was saying (because he used new words i have never seen before) but once i became an expert on the context clues this book flew by. it was a story about 2 completely opposite “gentlemen” that made their living by having pretend duels until they...more

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Sep 17, 2012 James rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, audiobook

Summary from Amazon: "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 bamb...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Elliot Ratzman rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read Chabon’s satisfying adventure novel in one brisk sitting and with dictionary in hand, looking up a few archaic words each page. The chore of looking up exotic English terms mimicked the ordeals of the characters dealing with one strange situation after another and helps transport you into the terms of the story. The tropes of fantasy adventure are all here, impishly deployed and beautifully rendered. This is perhaps the first historical fantasy about the Khazars, a legendary Turkish-Cauca...more

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About Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon (b. 1963) is an acclaimed and bestselling author whose works include the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000). Chabon achieved literary fame at age twenty-four with his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), which was a major critical and commercial success. He then published Wonder Boys (1995), another bestseller, which was mad...more

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