Berkeley's Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Michael Chabon's latest novel, "Telegraph Avenue," has just hit bookstores to critical acclaim. But let's not forget his triumphs of the past:

1. "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," (1988). This coming-of-age tale set during the early 1980s in Pittsburgh, Penn, was Chabon's first novel, which he began writing as a 21-year-old undergrad. One of his advisors sent it to a literary agent.

2. "Wonder Boys," (1995). Here we meet two unforgettable characters: Grady Tripp, a former publishing prodigy now struggling with infidelity and a stalled novel, and Grady's student, James Leer, a budding writer obsessed with Hollywood self-destruction. The book became a movie of the same name in 2000.

3. "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," (2000). Chabon won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 for this novel that follows the lives of two Jewish cousins in the comics industry before, during, and after World War II.

4. "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," (2007). A hard-boiled detective story that imagines an alternate history in which Israel collapsed in 1948 and European Jews settled in Alaska.

5. "The Gentlemen of the Road," (2007). This was a 15-part serialized novel that ran in the New York Times Magazine. Chabon described it as a "swashbuckling adventure," following two Jewish bandits in Khazaria, now southwest Russia, around the year 950.

-- Angela Hill