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The Yiddish Policemen's Union

by Michael Chabon

3.69 · Rating details · 52,688 Ratings · 6,055 Reviews

For sixty years, Jews have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry the For sixty years, Jews have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown.

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 revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown.

But 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. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written. ...more

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Hardcover, First Edition, 414 pages

Published May 1st 2007 by HarperCollins

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Community Reviews

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Nov 28, 2008 Edan rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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, Dude, before you ...more

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May 06, 2007 Anne rated it it was amazing

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 character-driven, and the people "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 character-driven, and the people of this book are warm-blooded and quirky; they do not stand for ideologies, and this is no morality play. Chabon manages to write a top-notch piece of mystery-detective-novel-noir that simulatenously parodies and celebrates the genre. The plot is a page-turning thrill, and his prose throughout is gorgeous -- suitably hard-boiled to give his nozzes clout, ripe with metaphors (pastiche or fresh), always delicious enough to taste Literary. This is speculative fiction that makes you feel, not just think: Will Meyer and Bina reunite? Will Meyer ever be OK? What did it feel like to be blessed by Mendel Shpliman, to play chess with him?

And of course Chabon's book makes you think. It's full of Big Questions... What would have happened if countries had -- however reluctantly -- opened their doors to European Jews during WWII, sparing 4 of the 6 million killed? If Zionists had botched things in Israel and instead found themselves in Alaska, disputing land with Native Americans, dreaming up terrorist plots to win back the holy land? Characters and readers alike must wonder, can a people who have been driven from place to place, who have been massacred and betrayed, who are desperate...can they make good moral choices? Can they choose to live by the book, "the book," or any book at all?

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is about horrible things done to and by Jews, to and by people all over the world. It's about entitlement and destitution. In ways both obvious and subtle, it examines the Problem of Israel, the real one we face, and America's role in it -- the dangers of fundamentalism, of a "Jewish" state, of the lack of one, of the pain of believing in nothing and the stain of believing in anything. It cracks open the possibility that we do not and cannot understand everything around us. While the story is painful and the outlook for the characters often grim, Chabon helps us believe in miracles, blessings...even the crumbs of salvation. They taste, I think he'd tell us, like a shtekeleh.*

*an Alaskan-Jewish Filipino-style Chinese doughnut ...more

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Nov 15, 2016 Lyn rated it really liked it

Oy vey!

Michael Chabon’s 2007 novel is about as original an alternative history as can be imagined: Israel collapsed in 1948 and a section of Alaska has been set aside for an extended Jewish territory. Within this setup, Chabon then goes on to tell a fun whodunit.

Meshuganah!

Like the best of Tom Wolfe’s writing, Chabon’s descriptive language and inventive style sets this apart from other alternate history books about Jews in Alaska. While the mystery can drag at times and this was longer than I wo ...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Megha rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviews

When I think of The Yiddish Policemen's Union, I can picture a complacent Chabon frequently patting his own back while writing this book. If he can come up with three ornamental ways to portray one thing, he includes all three of them in the book. He seems mighty pleased with his writing and probably believes in sharing his beautiful mind with everyone. He will leave you sitting on the edge of your seat with suspense, to furnish a leisurely description of the setting before moving on. Every litt ...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Richard Derus rated it really liked it

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Book Report: 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 revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music Rating: 4.75* of five

The Book Report: 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 revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown.

But 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. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

My Review: A small, overlooked historical tidbit...very real and true...gives rise to a what-if novel of huge impact and fascination. What if Roosevelt's half-serious proposal to resettle European Jewry in the American territory of Alaska, made in 1939, had been accepted? Millions of Jews forcibly relocated to the southern reaches of what was then virtually terra incognita...living in the world's largest, most beautiful ghetto, at the mercy of a sixty-year term lease, and an American government that (one senses) was caught flat-footed by the plan's success. The novel opens as the lease is just about to expire...and the problems that presents to the world, to the people who have built a culture...yet again! changing the whole of their known world!...that now is under order of execution. All seen through the eyes of a policeman doing his job, in spite of the fact that the laws he's enforcing are set to vanish. It's fascinating.

Superb book. Characters I could imagine living next door to, and enjoying the mishegas of their lives from a distance. A fascinating PoD for the alternate history buffs, a tiny footnote to history of a proposal that went nowhere in 1939 OTL. I felt fascinated by Chabon's exploration of this alternate history because it was never done "historically" but rather through the lives of the characters, their intertwined existences depended on *this particu;lar world* coming into being. That, ladeesngennlemun, is how it should be done.

Side note, book won the 2008 Locus Award for best novel. And deservedly so. Also won the Sidewise Award for best long-form alternative history, the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the BSFA Best Novel Award.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ...more

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Sep 19, 2015 Matthew Quann rated it really liked it

Shelves: sff-award-winners

Many years ago, after I'd finished off The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, one of my all-time favourites, I decided to follow up on my personal Chabon binge with The Yiddish Policeman's Union. For one reason or another, I made it about 50 pages deep and abandoned the entire book. I sat it next to its better known counterpart on a shelf where it would rest for many years. Then, suddenly, it became a book club pick and I saw it as a sign to dig in and give this book another kick at the Many years ago, after I'd finished off The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, one of my all-time favourites, I decided to follow up on my personal Chabon binge with The Yiddish Policeman's Union. For one reason or another, I made it about 50 pages deep and abandoned the entire book. I sat it next to its better known counterpart on a shelf where it would rest for many years. Then, suddenly, it became a book club pick and I saw it as a sign to dig in and give this book another kick at the can. Luckily, it turned out to be a very rewarding experience!

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is a major departure from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay in that it is a detective story set in an alternate timeline where the Jewish populace settled in Sitka, Alaska rather than Israel following WWII. In short, this is one quirky book. It begins with a murder mystery, but quickly becomes a character study of Detective Meyer Landsman, his supporting cast, and this strange world. Sitka is fully realized and entirely believable, due to Chabon's world-building with alternate-timeline music, donut shops, neighbourhoods, and the disposition of his characters. Much has been made of Chabon's signature writing style, and he employs it here to pack readable and gorgeous packets of prose in between on-point dialogue.

Meyer Landsman, the book's lead, is a relatable and interesting character who acts as the reader's guide through the novel. Though it all starts with a man catching a bullet in the back of the head, Jewish mythology, colourful characters, and a complex conspiracy lie in the path of Landsman's case. Though the plot becomes absurd at points, it is grounded by Landsman's consistent and biting perspective, as well as Chabon's realistic descriptive passages. The mystery is also supplemented with Landsman's tangly love life, and his life's intersection points with his partner, Berko Shemets. These ingredients all make for a story with real heart, and more than a few heartwarming moments.

More than once, I thought of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie while reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Both employ religion and mythology to supplement the story in a fashion that helps to develop the culture and world that their characters inhabit. Yet both novels also, in my opinion, share the same flaw: they both go into territory that becomes esoteric for those not familiar with the subject matter. While I thought Chabon handled this much more effectively than Rushdie, there were still times where I had to pause my reading to do a little research on Jewish religion or history (see the "red heifer"). Another minor gripe I had with the story is that it seemed to expand exponentially in ridiculousness as the story wore on. I'm conflicted on this, as I absolutely adored the weirdness of it all, but I also thought it seemed to be getting slightly out of control during the last 50 pages.

I'd heard from various sources that Chabon is a divisive author. While The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay seems to rock everyone's literary world, I'd heard his other books tended to turn people off, or at least thin the thick crowd of fans from Chabon's Pulitzer-winning novel. I'm very happy I read The Yiddish Policeman's Union, and I'll be sure to try more Chabon in the future. The novel is complex, beautifully written, compelling, quirky, and more often than not, a hilarious read. My gripes above are relatively minor, and while not all The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay fans may enjoy the novel, it is certainly worth a shake. ...more

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Nov 29, 2008 Manny rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, games, the-tragedy-of-chess

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 loving it are s ...more

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May 07, 2008 Lena rated it liked it

Recommended to Lena by: Moonrat

Shelves: fiction

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 down 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 down detective Meyer Landsman.

The narrative revolves around Landsman's quest to solve this murder despite growing evidence that there are quite a few people who would strongly prefer he mind his own business. The story is a complex one, the basic murder mystery woven through with issues of religion and race, politics and love, loss and redemption.

Despite the intriguing premise, it took me quite some time to get into this novel. Though I felt a certain amount of detached pity for Landsman, I simply didn't find him involving enough as a character to really care that much about him. It wasn't until the identity of the dead man was revealed that I really felt myself begin to get invested in just where this story was going. Unfortunately, that didn't occur until 100-plus pages in.

Chabon's writing may have contributed to my difficulty engaging with this story. Though he is clearly a highly creative prose stylist, there were times when he shifted between past and present in a way I found very confusing. In addition, he would go on such long expositional passages between brief lines of dialogue that I would forgot what the main thread of the conversation was about and have to go back and re-read. Perhaps this is all very literary, but quirks like these repeatedly took me out of the story.

Despite those problems, I did enjoy this novel in a detached sort of way. I found the themes it explored and the way it explored them intellectually interesting. But it just didn't grab me emotionally as much as I expected it to from the premise. I think my taste and Chabon's style are perhaps not the best match.
...more

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Jun 15, 2008 Kersplebedeb rated it really liked it

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.

In many ways, Michael Chabon's ...more

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Aug 16, 2008 Sandi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, cross-genre, hugo-nominees-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 history; but it’s a socio-p 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 history; but it’s a socio-political alternate history rather than a technological one. Any differences in science and technology due to the events that veer off from real history aren’t covered in the course of this novel. In addition to it not being science fiction, I’m surprised it won the Hugo because it’s really not that good. I know that saying this book is not good, or is merely okay is heresy, but I’m saying it.

My problems with this book stem mainly from the semantics and the fragmented storytelling. I liked that Chabon implemented Yiddish into the telling of the story. I liked that he used sentence structure that mimicked Hebrew/Yiddish sentence structure. I thought the use of present tense was unusual and interesting. I know that in Hebrew, present tense is often used in storytelling to make it more immediate. What I disliked about the semantics of this novel was they way it went back and forth between present tense and past tense. I figured out that the present tense was used when the story was focusing on Landsman and what he was doing. The past tense was used for telling about things that were happening. That sounds pretty straightforward, but it isn’t. There were a few times when Chabon would be telling about something that happened to Landsman in past tense then pick up on the present and switch to present tense. The tense would change from one paragraph to the next.

Now, just the fact that I was analyzing verb tenses should tell you how tedious I found the story. It had so much potential. The murder mystery was a good one. Landsman had a lot of potential as a protagonist. The alternate history of millions of Jews being relocated to Alaska in 1948 because of the failure of the Jewish state in Israel was intriguing. The impending reversion of the Jewish territory to the United States and the uncertainty of what would happen to the Jews in Sitka added dramatic tension. However, none of the individual element gelled into a compelling narrative. It seemed like a lot of great ideas strung together with no real connection. The language had the potential to enhance the story, but ended up detracting from it. The characters seemed to be two-dimensional symbols rather than three-dimensional people. The author would go of on expository tangents that had nothing to do with the story. Towards the end, solutions to different aspects of the mystery came out of the blue. A heretofore-unseen character would show up and hand Landsman and the reader a huge piece of the puzzle, no deduction necessary.

For me, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” was a book that had a heck of a lot of potential and a lot of great ideas. It just failed to put it all together in a way that was compelling and/or comprehensible.
...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Cassy rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction-adventure-mystery, award-hugo, physical-borrowed, region-america-canada, event-missed-author, format-audio, 2012

1. Chess
2. Police investigations
3. Judaism (Yiddish, red cows, those little hats)
4. Alaska

I don’t know much about any of these topics. And honestly, only the last one piques my interest. Which meant from page one, it was going to be an uphill battle for Chabon.

And he lost the battle. I mean he was slaughtered on that hill.

Now that I have finished the book, I have negative interest in items 1 to 3. I am still curious about Alaska. Yet once it was used in the set-up, the cold tundra was tossed a ...more

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Oct 27, 2008 Chloe rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, mystery-thriller, i_am_in_love

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 g 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 genre fiction, already with a Pulitzer under his belt, swoop in and steal this award (and accolades) from more-deserving authors struggling to break through that glass ceiling that genre writers toil beneath? It wasn't even true SciFi! The only fantastic element is that it's an alternate history type of story! To say that I was predisposed to hate this book is an understatement. I wanted to loathe this book, write a scathing review, inspire mass riots and book bannings. This affront to Science Fiction could not stand!

Imagine my surprise, then, when within the first 50 pages I was so deeply sucked in that I almost missed my connecting flight. The next 100 flew by so quickly that I didn't notice when the plane had even landed until everyone around me began standing up. The book was just that engrossing. Still, it's not Science Fiction.

Imagine, if you will, a world where Israel has yet to be established. Sure, there was a push for it after WWII, but the Arab nations made good on Amadinejad's oft-stated threat to "push the Jews back into the sea." So once again landless and reviled (apparently there were no Truth and Reconciliation committees) the scattered Jews turned to the Americans who offered them a 60 year lease on several ice-blasted scraps of islands up in Alaska. You can't help but think that it's a return to Shtetl living at its finest.

Once settled in Sitka the Jews go about solidifying their holdings, building up a major metropolis, dealing with the displaced Tlingit tribes (you'd think a group of people who had been chased from one corner of the world to the other would have more compassion for oppressed peoples), and quashing the militant zionists in their midst. All goes well for nearly six decades, until the time for Reversion comes. Then everything hits the fan.

Meyer Landsman is a washed-up disgrace of a policeman pulling a Leaving Las Vegas in a fleabag hotel until one of the other boarders is found in his room with a bullet in the back of his skull. For whatever reason, Landsman takes personal offense at this and begins investigating, against the direct orders of his new boss, his ex-wife with whom he shares a guilt-ridden past. Along the way he ventures deep into the heart of the very insular and very Orthodox crimes families that may or may not be planning for Civil War, into the frozen wastes of Alaska, and deep beneath the city itself.

To say that I was captivated is an understatement. This book grabbed me and would not let me go. This was no crisply polished apple of a story. It is dirty, it stinks of spoiled plum brandy and poor quality tobacco and it's falling apart from years of abuse. In other words, it hits my literary G Spot just right. Chabon mixes just the right blend of tradition, corruption, history and the eccentricities of a people who, reviled for no good reason throughout the world, have turned so insular and secretive that they no longer know themselves. I would be kicking myself for waiting so long to read this book, were it not for the fact that I finally got to enjoy it now and am still basking in the heady afterglow. But, still, it's not Science Fiction. Hugo selection committee, take note. ...more

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Oct 18, 2007 Deidra rated it it was ok

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 describing it's birth had me riveted. A 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 describing it's birth had me riveted. And then the characters' hardships begin. And then they continue. And keep going. The depressing acts were so unrelenting that it started to border on the melodramatic, one long dirge on the suffering and pain humanity inflicts on itself.

Now "The Yiddish Policemen's Union". I have to admit that I only made it through about 3/4 of this book. See, Chabon seems to have done the same thing all over again: taken an interesting, original concept and then populated it with contrived, formulaic plot lines and tired characters. Example: A mystery set in an alternate reality where the Jewish population has been relocated to Alaska after the atrocities of WWII. Sounds good, right? Well, it would be if he didn't just drag out the tired old noir cliches: the alcoholic, loner detective on a destructive downward spiral who won't give up the case; his family-man, responsible partner, there to pull him from the messes he makes; his estranged ex-wife who he still loves. Give me a break. I couldn't get enough of an investment in these characters to actually care where the plot was going.

There are some interesting scenes and it's obvious Chabon is well-educated in the areas of Jewish ritual and history. But even with a couple of unforseen twists, it wasn't enough to keep me reading.

Also, as a sidenote: I have to say the book jacket for this edition is one of the most obnoxious I've ever seen. Could his name get any bigger? The entire spine of the book is taken up with "PULITZER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR" which completely overshadows the actual TITLE of the book. I know Chabon had nothing to do with this design, but it's pretty bad.

...more

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Dec 26, 2009 notgettingenough rated it it was amazing

Shelves: games, crime-fiction, humour

I just have to record some great bits of this book as I go along.

p. 13

And just last week, amid the panic and feathers of a kosher slaughterhouse on Zhitlovsky Avenue, a chicken turned on the shochet as he raised his ritual knife and announced, in Aramaic, the imminent advent of Messiah. According to the Tog, the miraculous chicken offered a number of startling predictions, though it neglected to mention the soup in which, having once more fallen silent as God Himself, it afterward featured. Even ...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: usa, novel, 20th-century

It is probably my own fault that I was disappointed by this book. I heard a review of it many years ago on the radio and hunted up and down the shelves of bookshops until years later I found a paperback copy.

In my imagination I was sure that this book would be the hard-boiled love child of Isaac Babel and Raymond Chandler, witty, insightful and with its collar turned up against the rain. The title promised an array of pleasures. The slog of police union politics conducted in Yiddish, a hint of It is probably my own fault that I was disappointed by this book. I heard a review of it many years ago on the radio and hunted up and down the shelves of bookshops until years later I found a paperback copy.

In my imagination I was sure that this book would be the hard-boiled love child of Isaac Babel and Raymond Chandler, witty, insightful and with its collar turned up against the rain. The title promised an array of pleasures. The slog of police union politics conducted in Yiddish, a hint of inter-police union rivalry, the ribald camaraderie shared over the mid shift bagel break.

Ah, how that book lived for me and was so vital and entertaining right up until I got home and started to read it.

I loved the details of the Jewish settlement in Alaska setting, the ritual reinterpretation to create outside areas that were part of the home so as not to breach the Sabbath, the yiddishisms, the awkward interrelationships with the indigenous population, the chess club and so on but the messiah plot never engaged me. A personal messiah would obviously be very useful (view spoiler) but it is just not something I either believe or care about in this novel.

The temporary settlement didn't convince me either - it didn't strike me as remotely plausible that the USA were really going to turf out the settlers and return the site to nature. And what is it with this world in which dead men tell no tales that it apparently is too inconvenient for the bad guys to kill the hero but kidnapping and false imprisonment makes perfect sense? Had this been played as an affectionate wink to the woeful traditions of the genre it would have been OK, perhaps that was the intention, but it came across to me as though Chabon was serious about this. On the other hand I suppose an abrupt ending with the hero's corpse dumped somewhere in Alaska as a Christmas snack for the wildlife, fated not to be found (and then well chewed) until the spring is unlikely to catch on.

I suppose on the upside I learnt that I am not the target reader for a Chabon book, but I still feel cheated of a book about a Yiddish policemen's union. For me the setting won over the story and dragged it limply behind it, though I concede if your religious sensibilities are such that you are keen on the rebuilding of the Temple and the imminent Day of Judgement that apparently follows you may well be completely in love with this story. ...more

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Mar 24, 2017 Stuart rated it liked it

Shelves: crime-noir, literature, alternate-history, satirical-humorous

The Yiddish Policemen's Union: Larger-than life characters overwhelm noir plot
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
I knew I would eventually get around to this book. How can one resist? An alternate history about the US resettling European Jews to Alaska to escape the Holocaust, in a world in which Germany defeated the Soviet Union, Berlin was destroyed by nuclear weapons in 1946, and Israel was destroyed in 1948 in a different version of the Arab-Israeli War. Michael Chabon uses this setting ...more

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Oct 16, 2009 Jason Pettus rated it it was amazing

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

Is Michael Chabon possibly our nation's greatest living writer? Oh, wait, I already know the answer to that rhetorical question -- yes, yes he is. And that's because, more than almost anyone else working today, Chabon has the ability to elegantly enfold the elements of literature most revered by acad (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

Is Michael Chabon possibly our nation's greatest living writer? Oh, wait, I already know the answer to that rhetorical question -- yes, yes he is. And that's because, more than almost anyone else working today, Chabon has the ability to elegantly enfold the elements of literature most revered by academes with the elements most sought by the beach-and-airport crowd -- or in other words, he is able to find a magically perfect balance in his books between an exciting plot, deep character development, and a sophisticated personal style, and by "magically perfect" I mean that it's almost impossible to determine how exactly he pulls it off, even when you're sitting there actually reading the book in question. And so it is that Chabon is one of the few authors in America right now to have novels that regularly receive prestigious award nominations (and in fact even a Pulitzer win once, for 2000's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) even while being hugely popular bestsellers at the same time.

Take for example 2006's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I recently got a chance to read through the new "Netflix for books" service BookSwim.com (from whom I recently received a complimentary two-month membership, in exchange for writing about my experience here after it's over; that write-up will be coming in early December), a book so insanely popular that I've been searching for vain for a spare copy within the Chicago Public Library system for two entire years now. And that's ironic, because the book is in actuality a science-fictiony "alternate history" tale, and in fact is one of the few books in history to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards in the same year, the two most prestigious awards in SF and with highly competitive committees that are loathe to give it to the same book -- turns out that in Chabon's fictional universe, World War Two wasn't actually won until 1946, a much harder fight than what happened in real life (in his version, for example, Germany actually beats the Soviet Union), and that only ended after the US dropping a series of atomic bombs on Berlin. As a result, then, the very real Jewish experiment in establishing a unified Israeli nation in those same years was in his universe a dismal failure, due to the US's backing military support being so diverted by the war; prompted by liberals in Congress, then, as a conciliatory gesture the US establishes a new federal district in a large stretch of southern Alaska just for Jewish refugees (something actually contemplated in real life, which was the main inspiration behind this entire book), which over the decades swells into a major metropolitan area of over three million, comprising Jews from all over the world and of every persuasion, from mystics to militants and everything in between.

Whew, yeah, I know! And in fact, apart from the actual storyline itself, a major reason for this book existing is simply for Chabon to create a convincingly complex history for this "Sitka" that never was, using the incidental passages of this 400-page novel to leak out a massively complicated timeline: from the first generation of Mid-Century Modernist "Polar Bear" settlers, promised a fertile farmland paradise by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes as an enticement to move there in the first place, just to discover upon arriving a half-frozen wasteland and hostile Indian natives; to the World's Fair the district hosts in 1977, considered by most to be Sitka's cultural height; to the establishment of the "Jewish mafia," a particularly hardass clan of rural Russians known as the Verbovers (or slangily as simply "the black hats"), almost extinguished as an ethnic group during the war and with them never forgetting this fact; al the way up to the early 2000s of our story, with Chabon presenting us a crumbling, past-its-prime Sitka, just waiting out its last few months before officially reverting back to Alaskan territory (and with all three million residents getting kicked out at that point, and with no one quite sure where they're all going to go), with more and more of these soon-to-be exiles turning these days into trigger-happy Zionists, convinced that the Great Reversion of 2008 is a sign from God that it's time for them to march right back into the Holy Land and try taking over Jerusalem again, whether the Muslims currently there f-cking like it or not.

And let's face it, that just this alone would've made for a fine book, although one probably with only a limited appeal among mere genre enthusiasts, but this is where Chabon is truly brilliant -- because in reality, everything I've just described serves as background dressing only to the murder mystery making up the actual main plotline of The Yiddish Policemen's Union. And not just any murder mystery either, but a noir murder mystery, full of wisecracking alcoholic detectives and tough-as-nails dames, dangerously close-lipped gangsters and all the rest; in fact, Chabon has gone on record in the past about this, confessing that he meant this novel to partly be an homage to such pulp-fiction writers as Raymond Chandler and the like. And the reason this is brilliant is because an environment like this surprisingly turns out to be perfect for telling a noirish pulp-fiction story; because believe me, you've never heard sparkling rat-a-tat dialogue until you've heard it from the mouths of a couple of bitter, Yiddish-speaking Jews. It's the element that really earns Chabon his chops, and what elevates him way past the usual genre author; because while most writers would be exhausted merely from the effort of putting together this fantastically original and complex history of a frozen Holy Land tucked away in the Arctic Circle, Chabon himself essentially starts over from scratch at this point and instead asks, "Okay, now what can I actually do with this environment I've created?"

And this isn't even the end of the inventiveness; because on top of everything else, the book turns out to have a political message too, with George Bush in Chabon's made-up universe still managing to be President in the early 2000s, despite the fantastically fictional half-century of alternative history that precedes him. Although I won't reveal any of the actual plot developments regarding the last half of the novel, let's just say that it's important to the story that Bush is President, and that by its end The Yiddish Policemen's Union turns out to be yet another early-2000s scathing indictment of the neo-fascist, superstition-obsessed times we all lived through back then; and in fact, the ending of this book is not going to be very well received either by hardline Israelis and other militant Zionists, a surprising element in a novel where nearly every single character is Jewish.

Any of these elements on their own are just fine, and alone would make for a perfectly serviceable if not eventually forgettable book; combine them all into one tale, though, and you suddenly have an explosive game-changer that will literally blow your head right off your freaking neck. This is the power of Michael Chabon, and why more and more people each year are going absolutely nuts for his work; and I admit, now that I've read three of his novels myself (the other two being the aforementioned Kavalier & Clay and his early hit Wonder Boys, adapted in 2000 by Curtis Hanson into an equally great movie starring Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire), I too am rapidly becoming one of these Chabon fanatics, and am even thinking now of reading his new book of essays regarding the struggle among perpetual-childhood Gen-X males to grow up (Manhood for Amateurs), even though the very subject usually makes me want to claw out my own f-cking eyes. As you can tell, The Yiddish Policemen's Union comes with a giant recommendation today, and now stands in my eyes as easily one of the top ten post-9/11 novels so far in history. ...more

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Oct 11, 2008 Dana Stabenow rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I wanted to be a good reader, I wanted to give it a good chance and not pick nits because it wasn't written by an Alaskan. But I just. couldn't. trudge. through the prose. So, yet again, I feel out of step with everyone I know, who all loved the book and demanded I read it. Sigh.

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Oct 05, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it liked it

What if Israel had not come into existence in 1948 and another solution had been found, namely the USA ceding a portion of coastal Alaska for a temporary Jewish state? Now add to that a noir crime yarn set in this fictional state. What’s not to like?

Oy! This is a very slow-moving detective yarn, so slow in fact that I contemplated not finishing it. Chabon concentrates on giving family and cultural historical details in this alternate reality yarn. That becomes too much, particularly as the forwa ...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Melki rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery, fiction, noir

The corpse with the extra hole in his head may turn out to be the least of Detective Meyer Landsman's problems. His ex-wife is now his boss (professionally, this time around) and she's just handed him a tall stack of file folders full of cold cases she wants him to solve.
A dark Alaska winter is creeping in and Landsman is sinking deeper into a shady mess that reeks of conspiracy and long kept secrets.

There's no denying it...Chabon plays well with words; crafting sentences of such loveliness, yo ...more

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May 08, 2012 Clouds rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction-stand-alone, locus-sci-fi, hugo, science-fiction, reviewed, nebula, pub-2000s

Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.

On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.

While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became ...more

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Nov 02, 2007 Alex Telander rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-read-in-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 (which is why he 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 (which is why he can take up to five years to finish a book), Chabon has both the story and ability from the start in creating his piece of art.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, like his other books, takes you to a place you never could’ve imagined. In this alternate reality, during the time of the Second World War, two million Jews are transported from Germany to Alaska, where they invented their own small civilization meshed in the bitterness of their treatment in Germany and their treatment in Alaska, a cold and distant place from the contiguous United States. The main city is known as Sitka, but there is little independence, and any whisperings of nationalization are immediately quashed. Yiddish is the primary language, with very little American spoken. Little happens in this people’s history from World War II to the present, other than a pathetic World’s Fair that now only retains the constant reminder of the reaching stone structure known as the Safety Pin. Sitka is not a happy place for anyone, as they dream of Zion and their return to their true home.

Landsman is our main character, a policeman who’s been in the service for many years but has little to show for it, apart from a trashed hotel room, a failed marriage, a dead sister, and his own depression over the state of his life. And it is then that he finds out about the dead body in the room nearby. A man has been murdered and the case begins. With his partner, Landsman travels around the area, picking up clues, and trying to piece the every-growingly complex case together. At the same time, his ex-wife returns to the precinct now as his boss, with the news that big changes are happening and all outstanding cases must be dealt with post haste. But as Landsmen digs deeper, he finds a larger plot taking place, involving more bodies, and more importantly the death of his sister. The pressure increases from important people in high places, as Landsman with the help of his partner and ex-wife, who he is growing close to again, gets closer and closer to the truth.

While my hope is that Chabon will return to this incredibly developed world in future stories, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is nevertheless a thrilling mystery; a Sherlock Holmes case with a Jewish twist, that keeps the reader hanging on until the end when the case is solved, and everyone seems happy. However, the state of Sitka and these many homeless Jews remains in jeopardy, to be resolved perhaps at a later date.

For more book reviews, and author interviews, go to BookBanter. ...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, alternate-history, mystery, hugo-award, nebula-award, book-club-others, conspiracy, detective, neo-noir, police-procedural, 2000s, post-postmodernism

Many people seem to enjoy Michael Chabon’s books so I was pleased when I finally had a reason to read The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. In the dark Alaskan winter in the city of Sitka; Detective Meyer Landsman’s ex-wife has just become his boss and has handing him a huge stack of old cold cases that she wants him to solve. While Landsman life may feel like its already hit rock bottom, he’s only just discovering the mess that he’s in; a mess that will lead to a conspiracy.

This alternative verson of Many people seem to enjoy Michael Chabon’s books so I was pleased when I finally had a reason to read The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. In the dark Alaskan winter in the city of Sitka; Detective Meyer Landsman’s ex-wife has just become his boss and has handing him a huge stack of old cold cases that she wants him to solve. While Landsman life may feel like its already hit rock bottom, he’s only just discovering the mess that he’s in; a mess that will lead to a conspiracy.

This alternative verson of Sitka, Alaska in this book is a Yiddish-speaking metropolis. That was the whole basis of this book; Michael Chabon’s idea came from a book he found called 'Say It in Yiddish' which had sayings that he would never have a chance to use because Yiddish isn't the primary language of any country. While toying with the idea of a hypothetical Yiddish-speaking country this book was born. The idea was Israel lost the 1948 war; the Jews established a Jewish state in Alaska.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is an interesting blend of Michael Chabon's heritage with a love of old mystery novels. Chabon has called it a homage to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald and Isaac Babel. But while the noir stylings of this book are good this book also has a satirical nature about it, with a comic look at the Yiddish language and Jewish culture. Michael Chabon originally published an essay called Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts; which he discussed some thoughts he had of the travel book Say It in Yiddish, this essay was responded with a spiteful reaction from a Jewish community. This vitriolic response only spurred Chabon on and eventually he developed the idea of this book.

While there was some parts of the book that felt like it dragged on, over all the balance between the comical and the noir seemed to work. There are some great line coming from thing book; a highlight for me was "He feels like he suffers from tinnitus of the soul." I was really surprised with just how well the dark and gritty mystery mixed with Chabon’s satirical style. I liked the whole concept of a Jewish noir novel; it was a refreshing take on a genre that I love. Well worth checking out this Alternate history novel; as it is one of the best I’ve read. I hear that the Coen Brothers are looking at adapting this book into a movie, if anyone could do this book justice as a movie, it would definitely be them. I’d be interested to see if this movie ever gets made and how it translates onto the screen. ...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Arnie rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviews

Inventive, creative etc. Most of the writing style is top notch but sometimes overblown. I particularly liked the conversation with his ex-wife when she's introduced in the book as his new boss. Instead of giving the Jews a temporary homeland in Alaska, I would have preferred it more if they made part of Germany the Jewish homeland.

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Aug 01, 2016 Vonia rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-science-fiction, mystery, political, suicide, religion, russian, murder-crime, everything-changes-on-the-last-page, vague-endings, jewish, espionage-spy, overhyped, world-war-ii, drug-addiction, law, divorce, immigrants, alcoholism, alternate-history

I hated this book by the end. It started out pretty good, then Chabon started intensifying the Jewish theme. Then he started adding scenes where the characters literally cussed and slandered each other for a page "out of love" with harsh, unnecessarily offensive language. Comments throughout were made about how Jewish people were the worst people ever, various racist epitaths, vulgarity, violence, etcetera. I honestly am not easily offended. Chabon, however, crossed the line; the worst thing is I hated this book by the end. It started out pretty good, then Chabon started intensifying the Jewish theme. Then he started adding scenes where the characters literally cussed and slandered each other for a page "out of love" with harsh, unnecessarily offensive language. Comments throughout were made about how Jewish people were the worst people ever, various racist epitaths, vulgarity, violence, etcetera. I honestly am not easily offended. Chabon, however, crossed the line; the worst thing is how unnecessary was. It added nothing to the scenes.

Another problem I had was the excessive use of some Jewish/Yiddish terms, concepts, ideas, and vernacular in general that were never explained and it seemed the reader should already understand all of this. "Nu" for example, which I had to look up, is Yiddish slang for, I guess, a Canadian "Yea?".

Then, all the religious Messiah talk and political/conspiracy vernacular: the red heifer (necessary for the Messiah to return); a paramilitary group who wants to build a new Temple in Jerusalem after destroying the "Dome of the Rock" in order to speed the birth of the Messiah; an evangelical Christian Zionist American government; the victim Mendel Shpilman, the son of the Verbover rebbe, Sitka’s most powerful organized crime boss; the belief that Mendel (he had healing powers) was the Tzadik ha-Dor (the potential messiah, born once in every generation).

Conclusions. Aside from my appreciation for Chabon's characterization in Landsmen as a noir-detective, Berko as the Tinglit-turned-Yiddish partner, and the strong female in Bina, I hated it. This has to do in a large part with the fact that I have never really liked science fiction. Also not a fan of governmental conspiracies, not heavily interested in religion or politics. I probably failed to appreciate some of the deeper meanings of the Jewish and Yiddish cultures; how this alternate history was so mesmerizing. That being said, there are some other Jewish authors I do like (Joshua Ferris), and I did love some of Chabon's other titles. The difference being they were a lot less vulgar, religious, and political; focusing more on characters and emotions, a story rather than what read like an attempt at a thriller film-noir script.

[Looks like this never actually came to be, but it confirmed my feelings exactly. The Coen Brothers, no less! http://www.slashfilm.com/coen-brother...]

**** Spoilers ****

From eNotes (Explaining the complicated setting):
The premise of this alternate history novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is that a proposal made by Roosevelt’s Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes in the late 1930’s became law. He had offered to settle Alaska with European Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. The key event was that the nonvoting delegate from Alaska, who opposed the proposal, died in an automobile accident. Millions of Jews accepted the invitation and settled in and around Sitka, a small town of fewer than ten thousand people in the Alaskan Panhandle. There was still a Jewish Holocaust, but “only” two million were killed rather than six million, and it is called “The Destruction.” Although it is not clear how these events followed, Nazi Germany defeated the Soviet Union in World War II. Presumably, the resources used against the Jews were applied against the Russians instead. Germany was itself defeated when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Berlin in 1946. The state of Israel only lasted three months before the Arabs destroyed it in 1948, so the Jews were granted a sixty-year lease on what is officially called the Federal District of Sitka and unofficially “Alyeska.” The lease is only a few months from expiring, so the Sitka police department is under pressure to close its open cases.

From Slate (Someone else basically saying what I was, about this being more a film-script more about the thriller aspect than a meaningful narrative):
With The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Chabon has finally made the only use of genre fiction that a talented writer should: Rather than forcing his own extraordinarily capacious imagination into its stuffy confines, he makes the genre—more precisely, genres—expand to take him in. This novel bursts with so many forms and styles, it's hard to know where to start: It's a noir thriller, a Jewish family saga, a counterhistorical fantasy that manages at once to be utopian and dystopian. Mostly, though, it is a "what if?" story for adults. What if the Jews had lost the Arab-Israeli war, and with it the state of Israel, in 1948, and instead had to settle on a (literally) Godforsaken collection of islands the U.S. government had set aside for them in the Alaskan Panhandle? What would that state look like, sound like, feel like? And what if, 60 years after its settlement, the Jews had to give it back?

Chabon clearly had an enormous amount of fun answering these questions. For his depiction of the Federal District of Sitka, he has not only created a new landscape (what southeastern Alaska might look like now had it suffered the pollution of a Tel Aviv on the tundra, complete with a skyline, a ghetto, and a population of 3.2 million). He has also created a new language, a crazy amalgam of noir slang crossed with Yiddish—or what Yiddish would be had it been kept alive in Alaska for 60 years. This dialect, as alienating to the reader as the demotic Russian of A Clockwork Orange or the pseudo-pidgin English of Cloud Atlas, serves as a continual reminder of the novel's otherworldliness: It reads as if translated from a language that does not exist. There are clever puns that those with even a smattering of Yiddish will get—a cell phone is a shoyfer—and plenty that I couldn't figure out. (Why are rookie cops called latkes?)

From Wikipedia (The ending, for anyone not wanting to read it all/was unable to finish):
As Landsman and Berko investigate, the News reports the Dome being bombed. American agents apprehend the detectives and offer them permission to stay in Sitka, if they agree to keep quiet about the plot they have uncovered. Landsman says that he will and is released. Landsman reunites with Bina, frustrated by his failure with the Shpilman case. Remembering the chess board, he suddenly realizes that it's not an unfinished game: he had seen the same position from the perspective of the other player in Berko's father, Hertz Shemetz's house. Landsman and Bina track down Hertz, and he confesses to killing Mendel at Mendel's own request hoping to ruin the government's plans to bring upon the Messiah. Landsman contacts American journalist Brennan stating that he "has a story for him". It is left ambiguous to the reader if Landsmen is planning to expose Hertz's involvement in Shpilman's murder or the complex messianic conspiracy. ...more

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Sep 21, 2007 Emma rated it it was ok

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 into motion around 1939 by Harold Ic 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 into motion around 1939 by Harold Ickes (Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior), in response to a plea from a Jewish community in the town of Neustadt. The settlement was proposed in the Alaska Territory as a way to work around the United States’ existing immigration quotas, but fell through due to a lack of political support and backlash from Alaskans who feared the prospect of foreign settlers for reasons ranging from racism to increased competition for jobs.

In the novel, Ickes was successful in bringing his plan to fruition and Jewish refugees were given the Federal District of Sitka as a temporary settlement. That was sixty years before the start of Chabon’s novel when Sitka is getting ready to revert to the United States leaving the fate of the Alaskan Jews largely unknown.

Amazingly, all of these events are just a backdrop for Chabon’s actual story: an edgy murder mystery.

When Meyer Landsman moved into a local flophouse nine months ago he wasn’t looking to do much more than spend some quality time with his bottle of slivovitz and “the shot glass that he is currently dating” until Sitka finally reverts. Landsman’s plans change abruptly when the body of a local chess prodigy turns up in the hotel.

For reasons that elude even him, Landsman feels obligated to investigate the murder despite pressure from his new boss/ex-wife and other higher ups to drop the case. As the investigation continues, Landsman and Berko Shemets, his half-Tlingit partner, find themselves sucked into the underworld of the black hat community of the Verbover Jews and their nefarious undertakings.

Chabon also throws in several conspiracies, a cover-up scheme, a pseudo-terrorist plot, and lots of Yiddish phrases just to keep things interesting. This last touch is because the novel has the unique characteristic of being a novel written in English about characters who do not speak English: they all speak Yiddish instead.

So “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” does require a bit of energy to read. At first, nothing is going to make sense. But Chabon eventually pulls it all together. The Yiddish phrases slowly start to become comprehensible, as do the various subplots Chabon incorporates into this very unique story.

Chabon’s prose has a strange charm, which might be expected from an author who won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” a novel whose plot largely centers around a comic book hero. The narration is hard-edged, often gritty, but always with a smile threatening to form. (Jews from south of Sitka are referred to as “Mexicans.”)
From the first line, this story will grab a reader’s attention. Written in the present tense, it has an immediacy fitting for a book that tries to recreate the style of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective stories in a Jewish community.

Chabon starts off strong with a vision that he vividly crafts on the page. This vision begins to falter in the second half of the novel as Chabon becomes wrapped up in the complicated conventions common to noir stories. The explanations for several conspiracies come off as convoluted, if not entirely out of nowhere. The novel’s ending, too, is not as strong as its opening.

Shortcomings aside, Chabon has done a great service to the genre of speculative (or “what if?”) fiction by showing that it is possible to write a serious S. F. novel. ...more

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Mar 05, 2016 Dany Burns rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy-book-club-challenge-2, sff-challenge-2016, 2016-reads, read-but-dont-own

I'm going to start out by saying that I love alternate history. I think it is so fun and so cool to look at the world and think about what could have happened differently so I was intrigued by this book. Unfortunately I didn't love this book as much as I wanted to. There were definitely parts of the book that really sucked me in and I really enjoyed reading about but there were also a lot of times that the story just completely lost me and I got very confused. I think part of the reason that hap ...more

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Jun 05, 2008 Alan rated it it was amazing

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 its setting a ...more

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Mar 25, 2011 Sesana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, alternate-history, audiobook

I read and loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It broke my heart, which can be a good thing in a book. The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a quite different book. Instead of historical fiction, it's an alternate history. In this timeline, a part of Alaska was given over to Jewish immigration just before World War II. Sixty years later, that land will revert back to the American government and the state of Alaska, leaving the residents to scatter.

But the alternate history, fascinat ...more

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Jan 21, 2009 Jamie Collins rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, time-travel-alt-history

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 certainly ...more

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About Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon (b. 1963) is an acclaimed and bestselling author whose works include the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000). Chabon achieved literary fame at age twenty-four with his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), which was a major critical and commercial success. He then published Wonder Boys (1995), another bestseller, which was mad ...more

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“Every generation loses the Messiah it has failed to deserve.” — 67 likes

“It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts.” — 41 likes

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