Another book report: Gentlemen of the Road

A couple of weeks ago I read Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. Quite a nice little book. Also a quick read, despite Chabon’s juicy verbosity. He rolled out word after word that caused me to want to reach for the dictionary, but I didn’t because I’m lazy and because the story reads just fine anyway.

In the spirit of classic adventure yarns, the novel concerns two dissimilar traveling companions near the Caspian Sea, circa A.D. 950. Despite psychological and physical differences, they’ve formed a connection that has kept them together for years as they eke out a living, surviving with their wits and their weapons.

One, Amran, is a huge African bearing a Viking battleaxe. He is well-traveled and has seen years of service in the armies of the Byzantine emperor. The other is Zelikman, a slim Frankish physician prone to brooding. Both are Jewish, and become embroiled in a plot to return a young man to the throne of the Jewish empire of Khazaria after his family was overthrown in a coup.

Chabon grounds his novel in real-world grimness and violence, yet rarely strays far from a low-key wry humor. Amran and Zelikman have had hard lives and deep sadness, driving out any overt expressions of sympathy or philanthropy they might otherwise have shown; they are jaded “gentlemen.” Yet their own rootlessness and lack of attachment to anyone but one another (and even that is somewhat shaky) allows them to take risks to help others in need. They’d probably be right at home among Robin Hood’s merry men.

Fun book.