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Published December 11, 2000 7:35PM (EST)

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
This novel deals with an unexplored slice of Jewish history, which is the influence of Jews on the genesis of the American comic book superhero. The superhero became simultaneously a fantasy of assimilating and surpassing. The book has an authentic feel for the period rather than an iconographic feel for it, and Chabon manages to bring his research into the story without slowing it down.

--Charles Taylor

Dream Stuff: Stories by David Malouf
As New York magazine book critic Daniel Mendelsohn has noted, Malouf, an Australian, is one of those writers everyone you know has heard is great and has been meaning to read but no one ever quite gets around to it. I got around to Malouf with this book, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner. Each of the stories here -- from a young girl in a fundamentalist family describing her gay uncle's visits home (he can't enter the house so he stands at the gate during their Easter dinner) to a writer's strange encounter with an assailant on a dark city street -- rings as pure and true as a silver bell.

--Laura Miller

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