Josef Kavalier gets smuggled out of Prague in 1939 in a coffin with the Golem, lands on his cousin Sammy Clay’s bedroom floor in Brooklyn, and the two of them invent a comic book hero called the Escapist who spends every issue punching Hitler. That makes them a fortune for somebody else, because they sign the rights away like everybody did. Around it: The golden age of comics, stage magic and Houdini, escape artistry as the book’s whole governing idea, Joe’s family still in Prague, Sammy’s life as a closeted man in the forties, and a stretch of Antarctic wartime service that is the strangest and best part. It won the Pulitzer.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay