Ho shet, a medieval story with snark

"War," said Joseph Hirkanos to the elephant. He spat on the grass ... "Bad for the Radanites."


"Not always," said his nephew, a would-be sharp operator who lacked for the satisfaction of his ambition only the quality of sharpness and who expended all of his energies, as far as Joseph could see, on preserving his opinions from contamination by experience.

Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road concerns itself with tenth-century odd couple Zelikman (rail-thin, morbid, and given to slicing up passersby with an oversized bodkin) and Amram (a veritable giant of an ex-soldier with a pleasantly obscene Viking axe and a good hand at shatranj) and what adventures the two globe-trotting swindlers run into after attaching themselves to the quest of the fugitive Khazar prince, Filaq. It's a story liberally laced with elephants, Jews, black humour, and dead men, all of which combine to make--well, it's difficult to describe, but it's very good, so I shall just say that it combines to make a swashbuckling knit-up of elephants, Jews, black humour, and dead men that is more, much more, than the sum of its parts. Trust me: it's better than it sounds.

~Mnem