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book data
10,133 ratings,
3.64
average rating, 2,559 reviews
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published
May 1st 2007
by HarperCollins
binding
Hardcover, 414 pages
setting
The United States
literary awards
Hugo Award for Best Novel (2008), Nebula Award for Best Novel (2007), Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2008), The Sidewise Award for Best Novel (2007)
isbn
0007149824
(isbn13: 9780007149827)
description
For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in ...more
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avg 3.64
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
those who "weary of ganefs and prophets, guns and sacrifies, the infinite gangster weight of God"
"I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag."
The Yiddish Policeman's Union is one of those rare, rare novels of ideas that is also c...more
The Yiddish Policeman's Union is one of those rare, rare novels of ideas that is also c...more
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(17 people liked it)
2 comments
Read in December, 2008
You know that fashion rule where, before you leave the house, you're supposed to quickly turn to a mirror and then take off the first accessory that catches your eye? Well, I feel like Chabon should have done that with his prose, which is sometimes so ridiculously overwritten and boastful that it ruined an otherwise pretty interesting story.
With some writers, I want them to put on another accessory or two--please, would some bangle bracelets kill you?--but with Chabon I'm like, Dud...more
With some writers, I want them to put on another accessory or two--please, would some bangle bracelets kill you?--but with Chabon I'm like, Dud...more
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(11 people liked it)
4 comments
recommended to Lena by:
Moonrat
When I first heard about this novel, I found its premise too fascinating to resist: it's a noir-inspired murder mystery set in an alternate universe in which refugees from the failed state of Israel are living in a section of Alaska temporarily loaned to them by the US government. At the beginning of Chabon's novel, their lease on this land is about to expire, signs of the messiah's imminent arrival are accumulating, and a dead man has inconveniently turned up in the fleabag hotel of broken dow...more
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(10 people liked it)
10 comments
Read in September, 2008
I picked up a copy of “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” by Michael Chabon purely out of curiosity. This novel was nominated for, and won, the prestigious Hugo Award. The Hugo Award is for outstanding science fiction and I have never seen “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” on the science fiction/fantasy bookshelves in any bookstore. It’s only been in the mainstream fiction section. Now that I’ve read it, I still don’t understand how it won the Hugo. True, it is an alternate hist...more
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(8 people liked it)
6 comments
Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
people interested in Jewish culture and speculative fiction.
Imagine a crazy world in which, following the Holocaust, Jewish survivors languished in DP camps in Europe, were often still barred or discouraged from immigrating to the various "democracies", and found themselves pushed into emigrating to the Middle East where, through a variety of historical coincidences, they founded a new society based on dispossessing the indigenous Arabs and acting as imperialism's pit bulls in the region.
That's the crazy world we do live in.
...more
That's the crazy world we do live in.
...more
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(10 people liked it)
1 comment
Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
noir fans who aren't expecting much
Had a pretty lengthy review, which was deleted when I made the mistake of changing the shelf. Yeah, I don't get it either.
Long story short: I still don't get why Michael Chabon is supposed to be one of the great writers of the 21st century. "Wonder Boys" was an enjoyable read. Nothing life-changing, but smart, fast, and chock full of quirky characters.
"Kavalier & Clay"....not so good. I am a fan of the comics industry, and I have to say the beginning...more
Long story short: I still don't get why Michael Chabon is supposed to be one of the great writers of the 21st century. "Wonder Boys" was an enjoyable read. Nothing life-changing, but smart, fast, and chock full of quirky characters.
"Kavalier & Clay"....not so good. I am a fan of the comics industry, and I have to say the beginning...more
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2 comments
Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
fans of speculative fiction and/or Michael Chabon
Jews, Alaska, chess, and murder: usually these subjects don’t have much in common. That's until you read Michael Chabon’s new novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” where these elements come together to create the core of this quirky noir story.
Chabon’s novel is based on an interesting conceit: What if Jews had not been able to settle in Israel after World War II and, instead, were granted temporary residency on the Alaskan panhandle?
The original plan was set ...more
Chabon’s novel is based on an interesting conceit: What if Jews had not been able to settle in Israel after World War II and, instead, were granted temporary residency on the Alaskan panhandle?
The original plan was set ...more
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(7 people liked it)
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(Not really a review. Nor something I wrote. But funny!)
"Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it."— Ruth Franklin (Slate, 8 May 2007)
Something woke her in the night. Was it steps she heard, coming up the stairs — somebody in wet training shoes, climbing the stairs very slowly... but who? And why wet shoes? It hadn't rained. There...more
"Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it."— Ruth Franklin (Slate, 8 May 2007)
Something woke her in the night. Was it steps she heard, coming up the stairs — somebody in wet training shoes, climbing the stairs very slowly... but who? And why wet shoes? It hadn't rained. There...more
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Read in April, 2007
THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION BY MICHAEL CHABON: Michael Chabon is a writer that many other writers are envious of: he’s young, he’s brilliant, and his books will undoubtedly survive long after his is gone. Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay aside, Chabon’s writing seems almost effortless, but is pure craft and magic. Unlike John Irving, who plots out the complete story beforehand, and then meticulously crafts each sentence and paragraph to be perfect (whic...more
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(6 people liked it)
2 comments
Read in May, 2007
recommends it for:
Hebrew detectives; Alaskans
Michael Chabon's latest novel manages to be both painfully specific (add [www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com] to your bookmarks list if you're going to read it) and generously engaging. Even with the chill of both murder and the Alaskan setting weighing down the proceedings, Chabon's hero Meyer Landsman gives off an unaccountable, wonderful warmth.
It doesn't hurt, either, that the writer's prose gets better and better with each successive novel. Chabon has championed genre fiction in in...more
It doesn't hurt, either, that the writer's prose gets better and better with each successive novel. Chabon has championed genre fiction in in...more
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(5 people liked it)
7 comments
Read in January, 2009
This is a book that I didn't want to read. Once I actually acquired a copy it sat mouldering on my shelves for over a year before I got to it. Having only read Kavalier & Clay and having been only mildly whelmed by it, it didn't call to me at all. Then, madness of madnesses, it was not only nominated for, but won the Hugo Award, even when stacked up against such brilliant scifi writers as Ian McDonald and Charles Stross. Upset doesn't begin to describe my reaction. How dare this dabbler in ...more
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(3 people liked it)
11 comments
Read in November, 2008
The one thing I kept thinking while reading this was Arkady Renko - if the story took place in Moscow and the protagonist's name was changed to Arkady Renko (the protagonist from Martin Cruz Smith's "Gorky Park" and related books) I don't think I would have noticed the difference. (Ok, the whole Yiddish thing would have been out of place, but otherwise...) The similarities were rather overwhelming.
All of that being said, The Yiddish Policemen's Union was a good read. In an...more
All of that being said, The Yiddish Policemen's Union was a good read. In an...more
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Read in February, 2008
I usually bias my ratings to a 2 or a 4. A 3 just says "average" which isn't much help to folks looking for a good book to read. In the case of the Yiddish Policemen's Union I was so torn that I ended up sitting on the fence. I loved the concept: After the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel, the Jewish people are given a "temporary" safe haven in Alaska. I was annoyed by the lack of an understandable plot. I mean there's a plot of course...more
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(3 people liked it)
3 comments
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in May, 2007
Wow, this is a hell of a book. The prose style is ravishing - Chabon is definitely a maximalist. His language is virtuosic, full of pyrotechnics and equally in love with the idiom of hard-boiled detective fiction and with Yiddish. It blows you away, and it's also funny.
The world that Chabon creates - the federal district of Sitka, Alaska which became a temporary Jewish homeland after the Holocaust and the collapse of Israel in 1948 - is so thoroughly, magnificently detailed that you nev...more
The world that Chabon creates - the federal district of Sitka, Alaska which became a temporary Jewish homeland after the Holocaust and the collapse of Israel in 1948 - is so thoroughly, magnificently detailed that you nev...more
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Read in September, 2007
My father's family is Polish-Jewish. My paternal grandmother was fluent in Yiddish, and whenever I see my parents they talk incessantly about Israeli politics. I must have read at least half of Isaac Bashevis Singer at one time or another. Also, I'm a chess player. I even knew the chess problem in question, and had read Nabokov's explanation in Speak, Memory of his thought processes as he constructed it.
So how would it be possible for me not to love this book? But my reasons for lov...more
So how would it be possible for me not to love this book? But my reasons for lov...more
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(3 people liked it)
1 comment
Read in February, 2009
I love Chabon's prose, but I can't read it for more than an hour at a stretch, because it's exhausting. His writing is very sensual; he wants you to taste and smell and visualize every scene. There are no throwaway, transitory sentences, and no wasted opportunities for a vivid metaphor. Normally I don't have the patience for that kind of florid writing and admittedly it could be distracting sometimes. I was often pulled out of the story when I paused to admire the turn of a phrase. I can certain...more
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(2 people liked it)
3 comments
Read in June, 2008
On one level, this book is a standard detective story, with nods to noir film and at least one name-check for Raymond Chandler. The protagonist is a hard-drinking policeman who cracks wise and has trouble with dames (well, at least one dame), and takes an enormous amount of physical abuse in the course of performing his duties... duties which he often defines more broadly than his supervisors really expect. Sound familiar?
On another level, it's a science fiction novel, taking for...more
On another level, it's a science fiction novel, taking for...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommended to Colinski by:
The Week Magazinerecommends it for: Chess playing fans of detective fiction who are somewhat familiar with Jewish culture
OK, so it's certainly not the first hard-boiled detective novel set in an alternate reality. But what an inventive reality! Chabon created a parallel Earth that almost could have been. In the book's universe, a couple key events went very differently then they had in our own.
In 1940, there was a brief proposal from the Roosevelt administration to allow European Jews to emigrate to Alaska to escape the Nazis. In Chabon's universe, that proposal went through, in part thanks for an acci...more
In 1940, there was a brief proposal from the Roosevelt administration to allow European Jews to emigrate to Alaska to escape the Nazis. In Chabon's universe, that proposal went through, in part thanks for an acci...more
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Read in September, 2007
I read this for an upcoming book club meeting - it's not the kind of story I'd usually go for. I found the writing style difficult and cumbersome. Chabon's constant similes are tedious and clumsy, and although I understand that the Jewish/Yiddish vocabulary was necessary to the themes of the book, I was stumbling over them, trying to pronounce them in my head or ask people what they meant. I got tired of the characters unmercifully belittling and insulting each other. Characters truly so bit...more
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
Crime & conspiracy fiction readers, religious readers, Jewish-interested readers, literary readers
It’s an alternative history novel about Jews in the 20th century that makes more references to Cuban politics than to the Holocaust. It’s a book with a rich use of language that references Looney Tunes more than it references William Shakespeare. It’s a hardboiled crime and conspiracy novel after the hearts of old detective stories, and one you read for the language. Chabon shamelessly abducts the world-weary, overindulgent prose of that genre from the 50’s and 60’s to explore the Engl...more
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quotes from this book
"Landsman recognizes the expression on Dick's face...The face of a man who feels he was born into the wrong world. A mistake has been made; he is not where he belongs. Every so often he feels his heart catch, like a kite on a telephone wire, on something that seems to promise him a home in the world or a means of getting there. An American car manufactured in his far-off boyhood, say, or a motorcycle that once belonged to the future king of England, or the face of a woman worthier than himself of being loved."
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