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

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780007149834
ISBN: 0007149832
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: May 01, 2008
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Sales Rank: 1608
Studio: Harper Perennial

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Product Description:

For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a 'temporary' safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.

Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage.

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

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Lets go aain
It is part science fiction and part mystery. Or Yiddish Policeman is fully both. Thus just by that it is hard to classify. Whether you have a Yiddish background, or great exposure to a Jewish heritage, or an Alaskan one, the world creation by Chabon elevates this story to a level beyond the common in either genre.

Yiddish Policeman's is a very good book. It is a well deserved edition of exceptional literature. An achievement and worth reading. Is the mystery a little weak and perhaps a bit like a television mystery episode, in parts. Is our protagonist too intimately caught up in the details of the mystery, again perhaps. But as the story stretches out, these become small quibbles that do not detract that this is a phenomenal piece of writing.

The narrative and detail in creating the world soon has you engrossed in that world so you can believe in it. Would the jews wish to resettle to much ... Read More

Rating:

- Hard to get through...
This was another book club suggestion. I had a hard time getting into the author's writing style. The first 100 pages or so were very difficult for me to read because (a)I kept having to flip back to the yiddush glossary, and (b)the author was overly descriptive for some things. I was also disappointed with the last quarter of the book. The underlining plot was a murder mystery, which I enjoyed the build up to the solve. However, when it was finally resolved, the book ended immediately. It felt ...more This was another book club suggestion. I had a hard time getting into the author's writing style. The first 100 pages or so were very difficult for me to read because (a)I kept having to flip back to the yiddush glossary, and (b)the author was overly descriptive for some things. I was also disappointed with the last quarter of the book. The underlining plot was a murder mystery, which I enjoyed the build up to the solve. ... Read More

Rating:

- Alternate fun
Remember in the old Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever? Kirk saves Edith Keeler and some how Earth's timeline is altered. It's not until Spock discovers that Edith was a sort of lynch pin in time, that she had to die so Earth could go on its normal way. In The Yiddish Policeman's Union, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the always entertaining Michael Chabon, takes a real historical idea - a-pie-in-the-sky proposal in 1940 to open up the Alaska Territory to European Jews.

While Congress killed the real plan and in the book, a character named Anthony Dimond is the divergence point, Chabon takes on the classic What if scenario and spins a wonderful tale of alternate Jewish history. Added on is a glorious, hilarious Raymond Chandler style detective story.

We are introduced to Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police ... Read More

Rating:

- Please....ignore the bad reviews...
With mouth agape, I just read those negative reviews. I can't believe it, no, wait, I can. The book isn't easy, it isn't full of trashy scenes of greed, sex, easily understood 4th grade vocabulary or vampires. That must be it. The minute you tell me you read it for your book club, that's the minute I know why you trashed this book. Book clubs. Can't choose your own reading or need group validation so you know what's good? Can't discern that otherwise?

O.K...now for less vitriolic verbiage. This is a great novel. I used the glossary, and I used a dictionary of Yiddish terms. I am not Jewish, Alaskan or a huge fan of alternate history, but I am a huge fan of Michael Chabon! If he writes it I will come. His mind is not the usual mind, his pen is not the usual pen, and his wildly intricate thought processes fascinate.

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