The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a 2000 novel by American author Michael Chabon that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. The novel follows the lives of two Jewish cousins, Czech artist Joe Kavalier and Brooklyn-born writer Sammy Clay, before, during, and after World War II. In the novel, Kavalier and Clay become major figures in the comics industry from its nascency into its Golden Age. Kavalier & Clay was published to "nearly unanimous praise" and became a New York Times Best Seller, receiving nominations for the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2006, Bret Easton Ellis declared the novel "one of the three great books of my generation," and in 2007, The New York Review of Books called the novel Chabon's magnum opus. The novel's publication was followed by several companion projects, including two short stories published by Chabon that consist of material apparently written for the novel but not included: "The Return of the Amazing Cavalieri" in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (2001), and "Breakfast in the Wreck" in The Virginia Quarterly Review (2004). In 2004, a coda to the novel was published separately under the title "A Postscript", in Zap! Pow! Bam! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938–1950. From 2004 to 2006, Dark Horse Comics published two series of Escapist comic books based on the superhero stories described in the novel, some of which were written by Chabon. Dark Horse Comics also published a comics-format "sequel" to the novel: The Escapists, written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander and Steve Rolston. Plot summary The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival by Greyhound bus of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City, where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman, in Brooklyn. With the help of his mentor, Kornblum, Joe escapes Nazi-occupied Prague for Lithuania by hiding in a coffin he shares with the Golem of Prague. Joe makes it to New York City by way of Japan and San Francisco. Joe leaves behind the rest of his family, including his younger brother Thomas. As the novel develops, both Joe and Sammy find their creative niches, one entrepreneurial, the other artistic. Beyond having a shared interest in drawing, the duo share several connections to Jewish stage magician Harry Houdini: Josef (like comics legend Jim Steranko)