The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The golden-age comic-book New York of two young cousins who invent a superhero to fight a war America has not yet joined. The map runs from a publisher's office high in the Empire State Building out to the tenement streets of Brooklyn, the bohemian rooms of Greenwich Village and the fairgrounds of Flushing Meadows, with Josef's Prague and a wartime Antarctic base held as far frames.

Sammy Clay

Josef's Prague

Prologue frame

Before New York there is Prague, the city Josef Kavalier must flee as the Nazis close in. In the novel his escape is bound up with the old Jewish quarter and its legend of the clay Golem, smuggled out of the city in a hidden coffin. Prague is the wound the whole American story tries to answer.

Part I

inferred A deliberate excursion beyond the New York setting. The novel's Prague scenes turn on the Jewish quarter, Josefov, and its legend of the Golem; this marks the Old-New Synagogue at its heart. Set outsideSetting because it lies far from the New York bounding box.

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