It oughta be a movie: Gentlemen of the Road, by Michael Chabon
In this story, two "gentlemen of the road"1 travel through 10th century central Asia. The pale, skinny, morose Zelikman and Amram, an African ex-soldier with a Viking axe and a Zen attitude, are an oddly matched pair with a delightful dynamic. In the course of one of their cons, they get saddled with a Khazar prince whose family has been deposed. The prince, Filaq, is not at all pleased with the setup and keeps trying to run away, drawing them into a series of adventures and shenanigans.
There are lots of amusing and delightful details in this book, from the chapter headings (eg. "On the observance of the fourth commandment among horse thieves"), to the unexpected prominence of elephants, to the little nods to well-known history or culture, to the use of the not-so-well-known lost Khazar kingdom as a setting. Almost all the named characters are Jewish3, illustrating the diversity of cultures that can fall under that general heading. While it is very funny, there are sad or bittersweet notes to the story too, as one might expect. For instance, Zelikman grew up in Europe, where he saw violence done to his family, and Jews are banned from carrying swords. In an ironic gesture, he has named his thin sword Lancet, after the doctor's blade he would have been allowed. Amram began his wanderings when his daughter was kidnapped, but he has grown grey without finding her.
Overall, if you like adventure stories and want something a little different, I highly recommend checking this book out.
1. Thieves/mercenaries/swindlers
2. Zelikman's shaggy horse is named Hillel, for instance
3. In the afterword, the author notes that his working title was "Jews with Swords", in part because of the incongruity of a swashbuckling tale with Jewish protagonists. And yet, as Chabon points out, and illustrates with this book, there is no good reason - historically speaking - why such an image should be incongruous.
Adaptation issues:
The writing in this book would transfer quite well to a screenplay, with lots of descriptions of how characters act, snappy dialog, and very little internal monologue - mainly the sort that could be easily expressed as dialog. For instance:
"I have arrived at a new diagnosis," Zelikman said, sitting in the shade of a bear-shaped outcrop of green granite, his damaged hat brought low over his eyes, puffing on a short Irish dudeen whose bowl he filled with a paste of hemp seed and honey. While Amram did not share the habit, he encouraged it, because the pipe inclined his partner to a more charitable view of the imperfections that marred creation, for which the Jews of Abyssinia blamed a host of energetic demons but which Zelikman attributed to creation's having occurred without divine will or intervention...a heresy that would have shocked a man more troubled than Amram by piety, and which, like all Zelikman's heresies, afforded its promulgator no comfort whatsoever.
"The family of the Khazar bek arranged to make it look as if they had all been murdered by this Buljan fellow, as a way to rid themselves once and for all of that boy."
..."Perhaps they arranged to have themselves actually murdered," Amram said, "Just to make sure."
There are a few bits toward the last third of the book, however, that could perhaps use some tweaking - as I will endeavor to explain without undue *spoilers*.
A: There is an off-screen rape that could be cut, even though it is a not-unlikely outcome in the situation as depicted. The antagonist seems to consider it just a matter of course, a way of putting an uppity girl in her place. The victim/survivor already hates him as much as it is possible to hate someone, so their reaction is basically: "Uggh, that was unpleasant, but never mind - let me get back to my revenge." It therefore ends up having no bearing on the plot. The character in question could simply be delivered to the brothel where Zelikman and Amram are hiding out on the expectation that the putting-in-her-place would happen later...and it just doesn't, because they escape.
B: The character mentioned above is referred to as "she", but is so comfortable in drag I can't help wondering if she would actually be a trans man, or at least non-binary, by modern standards. How comfortable, you ask? Well, she plans to spend the rest of her life pretending to be her own brother... Zelikman, for his part, seems to be asexual. And yet they sleep together, with her in a female role, which feels like an odd departure from their otherwise totally platonic interactions.
His main motivation seems to be fondness - Zelikman being much softer-hearted than he likes to let on, and having become quite attached to this character. She, presumably, wants to have sex once on her own terms without having to explain anything. Again, not necessarily terrible or implausible, but I would still probably change it to something that is emotionally intimate but non-sexual if I were writing the screenplay. I might keep in the kiss, though, as it involves a dialog exchange that is helpful for revealing how they think about themselves:
"I have never kissed a woman before," he confessed to her when they parted again.
"A man?"
He shook his head.
"Now you have accomplished both at once," she said. "Quite a feat.
