'I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there's nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon'

The Final Solution Hardback

The Final Solution

Michael Chabon

Eagerly awaited new novella by the much -acclaimed Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Advertures of Kavalier and Clay.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, prose magician Michael Chabon conjured up the golden age of comic books; intertwining history, legend, and storytelling verve. In The Final Solution, he has condensed his boundless vision to craft a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic 19th-century detective story.

In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine-years-old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African grey parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out – a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts perhaps? Or something more sinister?

Is the solution to this last case – the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot – beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth?

Subtle revelations lead the reader to a wrenching resolution. This brilliant homage is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.

Reviews of The Final Solution

    • “On par with the best, most tightly written sections of Chabon’s last novel, the marvelous The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay…exceptional.” New York Times Book Review
    • “One of the best-written American novels published this fall…an experiment by a master.” The New York Sun
    • “A profound pleasure.” New York Magazine
    • “Chabon writes with plummy luxury…the language is luscious enough to lap up.” The Washington Post
    • “Delightful…and deceptively profound…Chabon shows his greatness.” The Courier-Journal

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