Genre Fiction
![Michael Chabon - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B00456TWZY.jpg)
The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.)
The New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback-"an excellent, hyperliterate, genre-pantsing detective novel that deserves every inch of its…blockbuster superfame" (New York).
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.
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.
Readers Top Reviews
MilesTegJohn Tier
This edition is, to put it simply, wretched. The print is so small it's hazardous to you eyesight. I'm half way through it right, it's a very compelling read but I'm thinking about forwarding my impending ophtalmologist bill to the publisher along with a very rude note. My advice is to look for a different format as you shouldn't miss out on this great book.
Cliente MilesTeg
como regalo es perfecto para estudiantes de ingles avanzado, además de ser muy interesante el tema del libro. . .
KateCliente Mile
This is the first Michael Chabon I've read and I felt at sea for the first five pages or so. After that I was hooked. I particularly love the originality of his descriptions. My book is full of short highlighted sections that are spot on but completely fresh.
Ajit NathanielAji
In the 1940s, the US Government approves a proposal to establish a settlement for European Refugees at Sitka – a seaside town in Alaska. These refugees, largely Jews fleeing the holocaust, establish a culturally and economically thriving settlement. In this fictional narrative, the state of Israel lasts but a few months in 1948 before it is overrun by Arab forces and destroyed completely. Thus Sitka becomes the focal point of Jewry, with members of various denominations packed tightly into that tiny town. Sixty years later, this territory is set to be handed back to the State of Alaska, throwing life in the frigid shtetl back in flux. Meyer Landsman, a highly respected homicide detective is at rock bottom due to his failed marriage and consequent alcoholism. With two months to go before the Sitka Police Department is either integrated into the Alaskan administration or disbanded altogether, Landsman’s life gets more complicated when he begins to investigate the shooting death of his neighbour – a heroin-addicted chess prodigy. What ensues is a thrilling ride through the Alaskan shtetl – two murder mysteries entwined with a sinister global plot featuring eccentric chess players, Chassidic gangsters, and diabolical government agents. Within the first three pages, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union rises miles above mere pulp fiction as a masterpiece that can be enjoyed at multiple levels. The book does well as a thrilling whodunit with a well-woven plot, sufficiently justifying the time you take with it. The more discerning reader has deeper themes to enjoy. Chabon has made up an intuitive Yiddish slang to correspond with life in the Film Noir shtetl. Common Yiddish terms appear matter-of-factly through the text, and the alternative meaning clicks in place effortlessly – instances are “sholem” for firearm and “latke” for patrolman. Yiddish phrases such as “A shvortz yor” and “Er zol kakn mit blit un mit ayter” appear in their English approximations throughout the book – a sort of a secret handshake to readers with exposure to the mame loshen. Beyond the linguistic theme, there is the deeper exploration of Jewish identity. Landsman’s colleague and cousin – Berko Shemets – is the son of a Jewish father and a Tlingit mother. The implicit question of Berko’s Jewishness takes the reader on a tumultuous and thought provoking ride through his personal history; his view of his father; the Jewish-Tlingit conflict in the early days of Sitka; and the varied cultural interpretations of “Who is a Jew?” Without weighing down the plot or flow, Chabon effortlessly integrates a succinct narration of the exhausting rigours of Chassidic observances and Judaism’s heretofore unfulfilled hopes of a messiah. There is also a riveting account of politics and power play within a Chassidic clan. In short, Michael Chabon has crafted a pulp m...
Hello SpudAjit Na
As a reading experience this is one of the best books I've read this year, and I am glad I invested my time in it. To summarize and not repeat what has been written in plenty of other reviews here: the prose is enchanting and the rich complexity of the characters and the world make for an all-enveloping vision as I read through the story. However a few things threw me off about this book, namely, my own experiences with Yiddish. As a language and a culture that I have encountered through my family (predominantly secular) and through my associations with Hasidic Jews (obviously orthodox), Chabon's Yiddish seemed a bit off, and although it wasn't a deal-breaker for me, it took a little getting used to. This book's Yiddish just isn't exactly the Yiddish I know, however, I make no claims to speak the language or have lived a Yiddish life. I finally came around to accepting Chabon's setting in Sitka, Alaska as more of a, "If this were what we got instead of Israel," senerio, and since I've personally had a lot of exposure to Hebrew, Israel and modern Israeli culture, I felt Meyer and Berko fit in a little better as I found myself seeing them this way. The plot also disappointed me on a certain level, as it starts off so seductively as we slip into a noir-of-sorts city that makes its way into a bigger world; I was fine with letting go slightly of that dark noir ambiance, but I was not pleased with how the book concludes; the wrap up betrays the theme of the book in some ways as it ends uneventfully (an explosion reported on the TV doesn't count for much with me), bad-guys sort of winning, nothing too learned to take away except that Meyer is getting old and contending with the idea that he needs to settle--his story to tell, at the end, was already told, better to have left it at that than to make it a tale he's now going to share with a journalist. On a final positive note, the characters are robust and so very real, especially the Black Hats who are without exception brilliantly written.
Short Excerpt Teaser
The Yiddish Policemen's UnionA NovelBy Michael ChabonHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.Copyright ©2008 Michael Chabon
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780007149834
Chapter One
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.
"He didn't answer the phone, he wouldn't open his door," says Tenenboym the night manager when he comes to roust Landsman. Landsman lives in 505, with a view of the neon sign on the hotel across Max Nordau Street. That one is called the Blackpool, a word that figures in Landsman's nightmares. "I had to let myself into his room."
The night manager is a former U.S. Marine who kicked a heroin habit of his own back in the sixties, after coming home from the shambles of the Cuban war. He takes a motherly interest in the user population of the Zamenhof. He extends credit to them and sees that they are left alone when that is what they need.
"Did you touch anything in the room?" Landsman says.
Tenenboym says, "Only the cash and jewelry."
Landsman puts on his trousers and shoes and hitches up his suspenders. Then he and Tenenboym turn to look at the doorknob, where a necktie hangs, red with a fat maroon stripe, already knotted to save time. Landsman has eight hours to go until his next shift. Eight rat hours, sucking at his bottle, in his glass tank lined with wood shavings. Landsman sighs and goes for the tie. He slides it over his head and pushes up the knot to his collar. He puts on his jacket, feels for the wallet and shield in the breast pocket, pats the sholem he wears in a holster under his arm, a chopped Smith & Wesson Model 39.
"I hate to wake you, Detective," Tenenboym says. "Only I noticed that you don't really sleep."
"I sleep," Landsman says. He picks up the shot glass that he is currently dating, a souvenir of the World's Fair of 1977. "It's just I do it in my underpants and shirt." He lifts the glass and toasts the thirty years gone since the Sitka World's Fair. A pinnacle of Jewish civilization in the north, people say, and who is he to argue? Meyer Landsman was fourteen that summer, and just discovering the glories of Jewish women, for whom 1977 must have been some kind of a pinnacle. "Sitting up in a chair." He drains the glass. "Wearing a sholem."
According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead. Meyer Landsman is the most decorated shammes in the District of Sitka, the man who solved the murder of the beautiful Froma Lefkowitz by her furrier husband, and caught Podolsky the Hospital Killer. His testimony sent Hyman Tsharny to federal prison for life, the first and last time that criminal charges against a Verbover wiseguy have ever been made to stick. He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.
"I hate to make more work for you," Tenenboym says.
During his days working Narcotics, Landsman arrested Tenenboym five times. That is all the basis for what passes for friendship between them. It is almost enough.
"It's not work, Tenenboym," Landsman says. "I do it for love."
"It's the same for me," the night manager says. "With being a night manager of a crap-ass hotel."
Landsman puts his hand on Tenenboym's shoulder, and they go down to take stock of the deceased, squeezing into the Zamenhof's lone elevator, or elevatoro, as a small brass plate over the door would have it. When the hotel was built fifty years ago, all of its directional signs, labels, notices, and warnings were printed on brass plates in Esperanto. Most of them are long gone, v...
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780007149834
Chapter One
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.
"He didn't answer the phone, he wouldn't open his door," says Tenenboym the night manager when he comes to roust Landsman. Landsman lives in 505, with a view of the neon sign on the hotel across Max Nordau Street. That one is called the Blackpool, a word that figures in Landsman's nightmares. "I had to let myself into his room."
The night manager is a former U.S. Marine who kicked a heroin habit of his own back in the sixties, after coming home from the shambles of the Cuban war. He takes a motherly interest in the user population of the Zamenhof. He extends credit to them and sees that they are left alone when that is what they need.
"Did you touch anything in the room?" Landsman says.
Tenenboym says, "Only the cash and jewelry."
Landsman puts on his trousers and shoes and hitches up his suspenders. Then he and Tenenboym turn to look at the doorknob, where a necktie hangs, red with a fat maroon stripe, already knotted to save time. Landsman has eight hours to go until his next shift. Eight rat hours, sucking at his bottle, in his glass tank lined with wood shavings. Landsman sighs and goes for the tie. He slides it over his head and pushes up the knot to his collar. He puts on his jacket, feels for the wallet and shield in the breast pocket, pats the sholem he wears in a holster under his arm, a chopped Smith & Wesson Model 39.
"I hate to wake you, Detective," Tenenboym says. "Only I noticed that you don't really sleep."
"I sleep," Landsman says. He picks up the shot glass that he is currently dating, a souvenir of the World's Fair of 1977. "It's just I do it in my underpants and shirt." He lifts the glass and toasts the thirty years gone since the Sitka World's Fair. A pinnacle of Jewish civilization in the north, people say, and who is he to argue? Meyer Landsman was fourteen that summer, and just discovering the glories of Jewish women, for whom 1977 must have been some kind of a pinnacle. "Sitting up in a chair." He drains the glass. "Wearing a sholem."
According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead. Meyer Landsman is the most decorated shammes in the District of Sitka, the man who solved the murder of the beautiful Froma Lefkowitz by her furrier husband, and caught Podolsky the Hospital Killer. His testimony sent Hyman Tsharny to federal prison for life, the first and last time that criminal charges against a Verbover wiseguy have ever been made to stick. He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.
"I hate to make more work for you," Tenenboym says.
During his days working Narcotics, Landsman arrested Tenenboym five times. That is all the basis for what passes for friendship between them. It is almost enough.
"It's not work, Tenenboym," Landsman says. "I do it for love."
"It's the same for me," the night manager says. "With being a night manager of a crap-ass hotel."
Landsman puts his hand on Tenenboym's shoulder, and they go down to take stock of the deceased, squeezing into the Zamenhof's lone elevator, or elevatoro, as a small brass plate over the door would have it. When the hotel was built fifty years ago, all of its directional signs, labels, notices, and warnings were printed on brass plates in Esperanto. Most of them are long gone, v...
