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This chapter examines the work of the American novelist Michael Chabon. It begins with a discussion of the peripheral role of the Holocaust in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, before focusing on Chabon’s 2004 novella The Final Solution. This work is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but one that approaches the Holocaust obliquely. By using the figure of the aged detective, brought out of retirement in order to investigate a murder and the theft of a parrot, it uses the conventions of detective fiction, dramatic irony, and textual foreshadowing to highlight the inability of reason to comprehend the Holocaust. The novella thus emphasizes the disjunction between the positivist, rationalist worldview of much detective fiction and the incomprehensible reality of the Holocaust.

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Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution: The Holocaust and the Failure of Reason

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Eric Sandberg

摘要

This chapter examines the work of the American novelist Michael Chabon. It begins with a discussion of the peripheral role of the Holocaust in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, before focusing on Chabon’s 2004 novella The Final Solution. This work is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but one that approaches the Holocaust obliquely. By using the figure of the aged detective, brought out of retirement in order to investigate a murder and the theft of a parrot, it uses the conventions of detective fiction, dramatic irony, and textual foreshadowing to highlight the inability of reason to comprehend the Holocaust. The novella thus emphasizes the disjunction between the positivist, rationalist worldview of much detective fiction and the incomprehensible reality of the Holocaust.