Author Michael Chabon, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, is currently enjoying his 15-part serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road (which at one point had the working title “Jews with Swords") being published weekly in the New York Times Magazine. Chapters 1 to 4 are online now, along with an audio reading of the first chapter. The serial has been described by Chabon as “a swashbuckling adventure story set around the year 1000.” Here’s an excerpt:

Though only a week earlier the idea would have struck him as heresy, as he lay waiting to become carrion he considered that plump and vivacious Sarah was perhaps unworthy of his suffering and death, when after all, she chewed with her mouth open and her wind, when she had been consuming too much milk, gave off an unsettling odor of brimstone.

But when he remarked the travelers, a giant African and a black-hatted scarecrow crowded onto the broad back of a massive spotted horse that looked to be on the verge of collapse, Hanukkah forgot his resolve and took a long warm swig from his water skin. The sight of living beings who were not, presumably, eaters of dead flesh awoke a fresh desire in Hanukkah, despite the wound to his belly, to prolong his existence just a little while longer, and perhaps to see his plump Sarah once more.

His latest book, a hardboiled detective story titled The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, will be published on May 1—the same day he comes to the Y as part of the Unterberg Poetry Center Reading Series.

[Michael Chabon: 5/1/2007]