Yiddish Policemen's Union | The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.)

book: The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) | Michael Chabon

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	• The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) Michael Chabon Harper Perennial, 2008 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 282 reviews view larger image
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just leave your yids alone

I've been surprised that the book's got both Hugo and Nebula.
Basically it has been my main motivation to read it.
Well, I could name the books published in 2007 that would make better candidates for the prizes.

I grew up in the old Jewish quarters of Kiev, Ukrainian city.
It has been once a place of thriving Yiddish culture; not anymore - after Babyi Yar (the Holocaust massacre place in Kiev) and after massive Jewish immigration to US-Israel in 70-90s. So I know this flavor very well, it was my childhood.

I would say - if you erase all those terrible yiddish names-definitions from the book, it would loose a half of it's flavor and meaning.
I mean - it's tucky and too much.

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Yiddish Policemen's Union

Michael Chabon has written a masterpiece of a mystery with The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Imagine Fargo in Alaska, with an imaginary Jewish community. In his book, Chabon has rewritten history - making the area around Sitka, Alaska a temporary homeland for the Jewish nation after (in the book) the nation of Israel has failed. In two months, this temporary oasis will revert to its former status as part of the US and all inhabitants will need to apply for permanent residency or be kicked out, facing a new diaspora.

In the midst of these unsettling events, Landsman the homicide detective faces unsettling of his own. He is burned out, living in a flop house where a dead body has just shown up. His ex-wife has just become his boss. And he's sporting serious, constant questions about what to do with his life, now that he doesn't really have a life.

To tell the plot would be to spoil the plot, so let's satisfy ourselves with the word that the pacing is slow at first but draws the reader into an imaginary world. By the end of the 1st act of the book, you are engrossed and cannot stop.

I would be remiss to not mention that there has been criticism of the book for its depiction of Jews in Alaska as criminals and as argumentative. This is fair, but one must remember this is a story where the lead is a homicide detective and the entire culture is unsettled by possibly being returned to exile.

And that's the masterpiece of the book. What would people do to discover permanence? What would Landsman do? And in this mystery wrapped within a mystery novel, Chabon presents a beautiful puzzle.

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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.

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