The brilliantly original new novel from Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning `The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' 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 ...
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The brilliantly original new novel from Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning `The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' 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 Yiddish beat. Now, after sixty years of federal neglect, 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 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 then someone's got the nerve to commit a murder in the flophouse Landsman calls home. Out of habit, obligation and a half-cocked shot at redemption, he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, and soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, 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.
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Add this copy of The Yiddish Policemen's Union: a Novel to cart. $0.99, good condition, Sold by ZBK Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Woodland Park, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Harper.
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Especially for people interested in the different styles of language. A little background in Jewish culture helps, too.
zavel46
Apr 8, 2010
Brilliant writing
I love to read - especially works that are well written in modern english. Chabon writes with colors. His sentences are little worlds that need to be explored. As you read through
the text, you wonder how a writer could craft a story with such brilliant descriptions. I found myself going back to sentences that I found engrossing. This novel has a Jewish theme
with fair amount of yiddish thrown in. Chabon translates the english for the reader. You don't have to be Jewish to read this book. You do have to love great writing.
hm1601
Feb 28, 2009
Haven't started it yet. Just finished another one of Chabon's books; I like his writing style. So my rating may be inaccurate.
greebs
Jan 27, 2009
A disappointment from a favorite author
I not only really wanted to like The Yiddish Policemen?s Union by Michael Chabon, I expected to love it. Chabon is one of my favorite authors, and Kavalier and Clay is a true masterpiece. However, his latest novel is a far cry from, really, any of his previous works.
An alternate-history book that will draw inevitable comparisons to Philip Roth?s The Plot Against America, Chabon envisions a world where, as FDR actually suggested (which I didn?t know) that a Jewish settlement be located in Alaska. Derisively called the ?frozen Chosen? by Americans (referred to as ?our neighbors in the South? by the locals), the area is due to be returned to America, and the Jews are due to go?somewhere.
?It?s a strange time to be a Jew,? almost every character states at one point or another, and indeed it?s true. This is the backdrop to the novel, which in most respects is ? or attempts to be ? a hardboiled detective story.
Our Mickey Spillane is a policeman named Meyer Landsman, a beaten-down shell of his former self, who spends his nights drunk and contemplating suicide. One morning, he?s called to investigate the murder of someone also living in his fleabag hotel.
I?d get into the story, which involves several different sects of Jews, chess and the Holy Land?but it?s really hard for me to do that. The book feels far too clever for its own good, and at several times Chabon refers back to characters who I barely remembered ? who turn out to be incredibly important and relevant. In the zeal to keep this alternative history ?real,? Chabon can?t draw out a historical review, so characters casually refer to things, in Yiddish slang no less, that take several repetitions to make sense. Many characters have similar, unfamiliar Eastern European names, and the way their roles intertwine gets more confusing as the book progresses, until perhaps the last third of the book.
Perhaps most disappointingly, the book seems to explain itself towards the end in two somewhat cheap ways ? through a flashback, and then by Landsman suddenly figuring a key component out in the last few pages. It feels beneath an author as brilliantly talented as Chabon, and while there?s no denying it?s a good book, it?s far from a great one. I didn?t much care for most of the characters, but I perservered because it was Chabon, and also because I did want to see the story play out?which it only sort of does.
All in all, a disappointment, and a book I couldn?t honestly recommend.
dCarey
Jul 13, 2007
Chabon's Alternate Universe
In this ambitious novel, Michael Chabon carries on the great literary tradition of crafting an alternate universe from the jumping off point of WWII. Just like Phillip K. Dick's "The Man in The High Castle" and Phillip Roth's "The Plot Against America", Chabon's Policemen's Union dissects the many paths of history and its effects on a people. Chabon departs from the aforementioned authors by presenting a vision that is as quirky and just plain fun as what we've come to expect from his novels. "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" is part fantasy, part crime novel with plenty of hilarious asides. And even though it takes place in frigid Alaska, this is good summer reading.
