Michael Chabon's New Book, Telegraph Avenue, Is Confirmed For Fall 2012

Michael Chabon's next book, "Telegraph Avenue," is confirmed for release in fall 2012, according to a series of tweets by a division of his publisher, Harper Perennial.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" wrote in The Atlantic in January that the book is set where he now lives, between Oakland and Berkeley.

"Each of those cities (Watson and Mycroft respectively to the showboating Holmes of San Francisco) has its own distinct character, or set of characteristics, its unique inheritance of grace and problems. Yet the line between them, a block and a half from my house, ambles. It blurs. At times it all but vanishes--or maybe, generalizing wildly, Oakland with its history of tough-mindedness and Berkeley with its mania for insight, together conspire to expose the arbitrariness of all such hand-drawn borderlines."

Earlier this year, the author gave a list of his real-life highlights of Telegraph Avenue to the Berkeley alumni magazine.

This seems to be a theme that he's been working on for some time. In October 2000, Chabon told the Random House website that he was working on a pilot script for TNT called "Telegraph Avenue" that "tells the story of two families, white and black, in Oakland and Berkeley, CA." He described it as a "family comedy-drama."

Though the show never got made, it seems that some of the ideas have found a new outlet. Meanwhile, "comedy drama" is a pretty good summary of Chabon's style.

Will you be buying his latest, when it comes out? Let us know in the comments.

Clarification: This article originally stated that Harper Perennial was Chabon's publisher. They are a division of Harper, and the hardback edition of Chabon's book will be published by Harper Hardcover. Harper Perennial will release the paperback edition. The details in the article have been changed to avoid confusion.