Yiddish Policemen's Union

448 pages

Published Feb. 26, 2008 by Harper.

ISBN:
978-0-06-149360-7
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4 stars (2 reviews)

In an alternate world in which Alaska, rather than Israel, has become the homeland for the Jews following World War II, Detective Meyer Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner Berko investigate the death of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy.

8 editions

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3 stars

Pribeh se sice odehrava v alternativni casove linii, kdy Amerika prijala Zidy ve velkym na Aljasce, ale jinak je to spis detektivka. Zapletka v posledni tretine dost graduje a vlastne me zaujala. Knizka zpocatku trpela zbytecne okridlenym jazykem, casem si to sedlo.

Jako ok, ale znovu bych si to nedal.

It's more of detective story despite placed in alternative timeline where jews fled to Alaska. I've had hard times to cope with the superfluous language/too many words at beginning, but it calmed down a little after some hundred pages.

Not bad, not fantastic, read & forget.

Review of "Yiddish Policemen's Union" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.

Michael Chabon's latest novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, at first seems to be simply a homage to the 1940's detective story, and that is certainly the backbone characteristic of this story, but it is also written in an alternative future and is richly embellished with Jewish cultures and the intricacies of chess. One reviewer at Publisher's Weekly called this book "a
murder-mystery speculative-history Jewish-identity noir chess thriller." Right. That's exactly what it is.

Chabon imagines what would have been if Franklin Roosevelt's proposal to establish a temporary Jewish settlement on the Alaskan panhandle had been carried out. The talented author calls this place Sitka, and populates it with …