迈克尔•夏邦（Michael Chabon）

当代美国文坛最受瞩目的才子作家。1963年生于华盛顿特区，先后就读于卡内基-梅隆大学和匹兹堡大学，并在加州大学厄湾校区获得创意写作硕士学位。1988年，年仅25岁的迈克尔•夏邦出版其硕士学位作业、长篇小说处女作《匹兹堡的秘密》，创下当时新人小说最高预付版税的纪录，上市后造成畅销旋风，也为他赢得“塞林格接班人”的美国文坛金童美誉。他于1995年出版的第二部长篇小说《天才少年》也大获成功，被改编成电影，由迈克尔•道格拉斯和托比•麦奎尔主演。

2000年，迈克尔•夏邦出版第三部长篇小说《卡瓦利与克雷的神奇冒险》，更助他以三十八岁之龄赢得普利策小说奖，成为过去三十年来最年轻的普利策奖长篇小说得主。一些评论家认为：夏邦写出了无数作家穷其一生梦寐以求的“伟大的美国小说”，而该书描写的，却是向来受主流文坛轻视的主题：漫画。

迈克尔•夏邦的作品常被评论家与约翰•契弗、纳博科夫等现代经典作家相比。而他对类型小说、流行文化的兴趣，也使得他的作品丰富多样，难以界定。2007年出版的长篇小说《犹太警察工会》先后荣获星云奖、雨果奖、卢卡斯奖等科幻小说大奖。美国电影奇才科恩兄弟将把该书改编为电影。

此外，迈克尔•夏邦著有短篇小说集、散文集、童书、青少年小说多部，还曾担任电影《蜘蛛人2》编剧。

目前，迈克尔•夏邦和家人住在加州伯克利。

With this brilliant novel, the bestselling author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys gives us an exhilarating triumph of language and invention, a stunning novel in which the tragicomic adventures of a couple of boy geniuses reveal much about what happened to America in the middle of the twentieth century. Like Phillip Roth's American Pastoral or Don DeLillo's Underworld, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a superb novel with epic sweep, spanning continents and eras, a masterwork by one of America's finest writers.

It is New York City in 1939. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat to date: smuggling himself out of Nazi-occupied Prague. He is looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a collaborator to create the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Out of their fantasies, fears, and dreams, Joe and Sammy weave the legend of that unforgettable champion the Escapist. And inspired by the beautiful and elusive Rosa Saks, a woman who will be linked to both men by powerful ties of desire, love, and shame, they create the otherworldly mistress of the night, Luna Moth. As the shadow of Hitler falls across Europe and the world, the Golden Age of comic books has begun.

The brilliant writing that has led critics to compare Michael Chabon to John Cheever and Vladimir Nabokov is everywhere apparent in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon writes "like a magical spider, effortlessly spinning out elaborate webs of words that ensnare the reader," wrote Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times about Wonder Boys—and here he has created, in Joe Kavalier, a hero for the century.