How long does it take to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay?
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon takes about 11 hours 43 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 11 hours 43 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1957. 639 pages, about 175,725 words.
24 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 19 hours 32 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 11 hours 43 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 7 hours 19 minutes |
The page count is the median across 36 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival 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. Joe escaped from Prague with the help of his teacher Kornblum by hiding in a coffin along with the inanimate Golem of Prague, leaving the rest of his family, including his younger brother Thomas, behind. Besides having a shared interest in drawing, Sammy and Joe share several connections to Jewish stage magician Harry Houdini: Joe (like comics legend Jim Steranko) studied magic and escapology in Prague, which aided him in his departure from Europe, and Sammy is the son of the Mighty Molecule, a strongman on the vaudeville circuit. When Sammy discovers Joe's artistic talent, Sammy gets Joe a job as an illustrator for a novelty products company, which, due to the recent success of Superman, is attempting to get into the comic-book business. Under the name "Sam Clay", Sammy starts writing adventure stories with Joe illustrating them, and the two recruit several other Brooklyn teenagers to produce Amazing Midget Radio Comics (named to promote one of the company's novelty items). The pair is at once passionate about their creation, optimistic about making money, and always nervous about the opinion of their employers. The magazine features Sammy and Joe's character the Escapist, an anti-fascist superhero who combines traits of (among others) Captain America, Harry Houdini, Batman, the Phantom, and the Scarlet Pimpernel. The Escapist becomes tremendously popular, but like talent behind Superman, the writers and artists of the comic get a minimal share of their publisher's revenue. Sammy and Joe are slow to realize that they are being exploited, as they have private concerns: Joe is trying to help his family escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and has fallen in love with the bohemian Rosa Saks, who has her own artistic aspirations, while Clay is battling with his sexual identity and the lackluster…
Subjects: American Humorous stories, Arte de escribir, Artists, Artists in fiction, Authorship, Bildungsromans
