Michael Chabon’s latest foray into genre—medieval fantasy, this time—comes with an amusing afterward in which one of our best line-by-line authors practically asks us to pardon him for moving away from realism. No apology necessary: This adventure tale—set in Central Asian Khazaria, it extends his obsession with fictional Jewish homelands—
boasts characters almost as precisely drawn as those in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Fun fact: Jews With Swords was a working title!