For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage.
At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.
ScoreJanuary 6, 2009 The Yiddish Policemen's Union is one of the best novels I've read in a long, long time. While it certainly has merits as a mystery, it is the characters, ghostly images of diaspora, and the plight of all people without a homeland that make this novel resonate long after one has put it down. Given events in the Middle East, Chabon's novel has an added poignancy, as it challenges one to contemplate a world without a Jewish homeland.
Lets go aainJanuary 5, 2009 It is part science fiction and part mystery. Or Yiddish Policeman is fully both. Thus just by that it is hard to classify. Whether you have a Yiddish background, or great exposure to a Jewish heritage, or an Alaskan one, the world creation by Chabon elevates this story to a level beyond the common in either genre.
Yiddish Policeman's is a very good book. It is a well deserved edition of exceptional literature. An achievement and worth reading. Is the mystery a little weak and perhaps a bit like a television mystery episode, in parts. Is our protagonist too intimately caught up in the details of the mystery, again perhaps. But as the story stretches out, these become small quibbles that do not detract that this is a phenomenal piece of writing.
The narrative and detail in creating the world soon has you engrossed in that world so you can believe in it. Would the jews wish to resettle to much safer Alaska, then to the very turbulent holy land? Probably not, but with speculative fiction, once you give into it, then the new worlds builds upon itself. Would oil be cheaper if there were no wars in the mid-east, or would there still be wars there over other issues.
Since we are concerned about the Jewish settlement in Alaska, we don't really even care about such. We become consumed about the world Chabon has crafted. Even thinking that perhaps more in this world would be nice to visit again.
Hard to get through...December 29, 2008 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was another book club suggestion. I had a hard time getting into the author's writing style. The first 100 pages or so were very difficult for me to read because (a)I kept having to flip back to the yiddush glossary, and (b)the author was overly descriptive for some things. I was also disappointed with the last quarter of the book. The underlining plot was a murder mystery, which I enjoyed the build up to the solve. However, when it was finally resolved, the book ended immediately. It felt ...more This was another book club suggestion. I had a hard time getting into the author's writing style. The first 100 pages or so were very difficult for me to read because (a)I kept having to flip back to the yiddush glossary, and (b)the author was overly descriptive for some things. I was also disappointed with the last quarter of the book. The underlining plot was a murder mystery, which I enjoyed the build up to the solve. However, when it was finally resolved, the book ended immediately. It felt extremely rushed
Alternate funDecember 28, 2008 Remember in the old Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever? Kirk saves Edith Keeler and some how Earth's timeline is altered. It's not until Spock discovers that Edith was a sort of lynch pin in time, that she had to die so Earth could go on its normal way. In The Yiddish Policeman's Union, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the always entertaining Michael Chabon, takes a real historical idea - a-pie-in-the-sky proposal in 1940 to open up the Alaska Territory to European Jews.
While Congress killed the real plan and in the book, a character named Anthony Dimond is the divergence point, Chabon takes on the classic What if scenario and spins a wonderful tale of alternate Jewish history. Added on is a glorious, hilarious Raymond Chandler style detective story.
We are introduced to Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man named Emmanuel Lasker in the Zamenhof, a fleabag hotel where Landsman also happens to live. Landsman notes how professional the murder looks; the man was shot in the back of the head execution-style, the gunshot silenced by a pillow. Landsman notices syringes, packets of heroin, an open cardboard chess board in mid-game, and a beat-up copy of Siegbert Tarrasch's book, Three Hundred Chess Games.
From there the novel unfolds like a flower, as Meyer navigates his way through red herrings and his failed marriage with fellow officer Bina, who is no his superior. Chabon takes us down this brilliant alternate history filled with appealing -and not so appealing -characters right out of the golden age of film noir.
A triumph.
Please....ignore the bad reviews...December 28, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
With mouth agape, I just read those negative reviews. I can't believe it, no, wait, I can. The book isn't easy, it isn't full of trashy scenes of greed, sex, easily understood 4th grade vocabulary or vampires. That must be it. The minute you tell me you read it for your book club, that's the minute I know why you trashed this book. Book clubs. Can't choose your own reading or need group validation so you know what's good? Can't discern that otherwise?
O.K...now for less vitriolic verbiage. This is a great novel. I used the glossary, and I used a dictionary of Yiddish terms. I am not Jewish, Alaskan or a huge fan of alternate history, but I am a huge fan of Michael Chabon! If he writes it I will come. His mind is not the usual mind, his pen is not the usual pen, and his wildly intricate thought processes fascinate.
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