Review
‘His almost ecstatically smart and sassy new novel…Chabon is a spectacular writer…[and] is a language magician, turning everything into something else just for the delight of playing tricks with words…Chabon's ornate prose makes [Raymond] Chandler's fruity observations of the world look quite plain…He writes like a dream and has you laughing out loud, applauding the fun he has with language and the way he takes the task of a writer and runs delighted rings around it.’ Guardian
'He is the most wonderful vaudeville performer.' Philip Hensher, in the Spectator ‘Books of the Year’
‘Michael Chabon’s brilliant new novel starts with a bang…It hums with humour. It buzzes with gags…Superb images also team in this long novel: the accumulated reading experience is one of admiration, close to awe, at the vigour of Chabon’s imagination…a hilarious, antic whirl of a novel.’ Sunday Times
‘A divine gumshoe romp.’ Sam Leith, in the Spectator ‘Books of the Year’
'Chabon has written such a dazzling, individual, hyperconfident novel that it's tough to work out who wouldn't have fun reading it. If the thriller plot doesn't get you (and it's easily the equal of any detective story in the past five years) then the exuberant style and the sackfuls of great jokes will… Whichever way you cut it, “The Yiddish Policemen's Union” is pure narrative pleasure, high-class stuff from cover to cover. Only a shmendrik would pass it up.' Independent on Sunday
'What really impresses about Chabon's eighth book is the author's ability to take a far-off, unfamiliar landscape and make it so densely, vividly imagined that 50 pages in the reader feels like they've know it forever.' Daily Mail
'A marvellous, masterly reinvigoration of the detective genre.' Daily Telegraph
‘A first rate noir novel always works on the premise that everyone has secrets; that we all apply veneers in our dealings with others, and that guilt is an omnipresent force in human interaction. “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” certainly plays by these rules…Chabon has brilliant fun with his Jewish-Alaska construct and its cultural disconnections. Besides being a fantastic crash-course in Yiddishisms, the novel never sins against its own splendidly absurd conceit by becoming overtly showy or pleased with its considerable brilliance.’ The Times
'Like his half-Yiddish, half-American-speaking subjects, Chabon cannot help but make new and awe-inspiring literary alliances and the result is a unique novel as irresistible as a fresh bagel.' The Observer
'The first - but hopefully not last - Yiddish noir.' Evening Standard
‘Chabon is masterly at evoking reality through smells and rises to the challenge of differentiating his “black hat” (Orthodox) characters with precise descriptions of beards.’ Observer
'It's Raymond Chandler meets Speilberg's "Munich", via Haruki Murakami.' Time Out
‘The treasure in this book is the energy, wit, language and sheer intelligent joyful invention.' Jon Riley, in Esquire ‘Books of the Year’
‘Mr. Chabon’s latest novel, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union”, builds upon the achievement of “Kavalier & Clay”, creating a completely fictional world that is as persuasively detailed as his re-creation of 1940s New York in that earlier book, even as it gives the reader a gripping murder mystery and one of the most appealing detective heroes to come along since Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe…authoritatively and minutely imagined…Mr. Chabon has so thoroughly conjured the fictional world of Sitka – its history, culture, geography, its incestuous and Byzantine political and sectarian divisions – that the reader comes to take its existence for granted.’ The Scotsman
'Chabon displays great skill in knitting together the disparate elements of his invented milieu…' Independent
‘It makes film noir look like film blanc by comparison.’ Arena
'It's a breathtakingly good novel, with a serious purpose behind the pastiche fun, and confirms Chabon as one of the most exciting writers of his generation.' Scotland on Sunday
‘His talent is undisputable. Chabon’s novels are warm, witty, a little whimsical, always beautifully written. He is that rare and precious beast: a literary writer with crossover appeal and a proper engagement with the demotic…Funny, touching and compelling, the novel transcends the limitations of all its genres – which is pretty much Chabon’s MO…a stunning achievement.’ GQ
'Chabon has taken flak in the past from US critics aghast that someone who has so much literary weight can be so entertaining. If so, the talent he shows in this ambitious tale will have them burning his effigy in every branch of Borders.’ Sunday Telegraph
'”The Yiddish Policemen's Union” is an enjoyable confection, written with wit and panache…Chabon's ear for cadence and his eye for details are lovingly acute…little is superfluous in this page turner…it entertains and moves, even astounds.' Times Literary Supplement
'A highly original detective thriller.' Financial Times
'The joy of this book is in the writing. Chabon creates a distinctive world and mood, Jewish noir, full of melancholy and loss but also buzzing with wisecracks and attitude.' The Jewish Chronicle
'This is a master storyteller at work, a stylish noir-esque murder mystery interwoven with pathos, wit, and the grasp of descriptive metaphor that make one swallow hard to keep from shouting with joy. Michael Chabon illuminates and invites discussion while his meticulous plotting and scintillating characters create an alternate world that compels belief…confirms Chabon's status as one of the truly great living American writers.' Waterstones Books Quarterly
Review
Guardian
something else just for the delight of playing tricks with words.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Sunday Times
with humour. It buzzes with gags...Superb...' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Observer
GQ
achievement...Hell, there's even a car chase.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Arena
The Times
cultural disconnections...' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Scotsman
Time Out
Murakami.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
The brilliantly original new novel from Michael Chabon, author of ‘The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’ and ‘The Final Solution’.
What if, as Franklin Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska – and not Israel – had become the homeland for the Jews after World War II? In Michael Chabon's Yiddish-speaking 'Alyeska', Orthodox gangs in side-curls and knee breeches roam the streets of Sitka, where Detective Meyer Landsman discovers the corpse of a heroin-addled chess prodigy in the flophouse Meyer calls home. Marionette strings stretch back to the hands of charismatic Rebbe Gold, leader of a sect that seems to have drawn its mission statement from the Cosa Nostra – but behind Rebbe looms an even larger shadow. Despite sensible protests from Berko, his half-Tlingit, half-Jewish partner, Meyer is determined to unsnarl the meaning behind the murder. Even if that means surrendering his badge and his dignity to the chief of Sitka's homicide unit – also known as his fearsome ex-wife, Bina.
‘The Yiddish Policemen's Union’ interweaves a homage to the stylish menace of 1940s film noir with a bittersweet fable of identity, home and faith. It is a novel of colossal ambition and heart from one of the most important and beloved writers working today.
From the Publisher
*Starred Review* Like Haruki Murakami in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End
of the World (1991), Chabon plays with the conventions of the Chandlerian
private-eye novel, but that's only one ingredient in an epic-scale
alternate-history saga of Jewish life since World War II. The premise draws
on an obscure historical fact: FDR once proposed that Alaska, not Israel,
become the homeland for Jews after the war. In Chabon's telling, that's
exactly what happened, except, inevitably, it hasn't gone as planned: the
U.S. government now has enacted a policy that will evict all Jews without
proper papers from Sitka, the center of Jewish Alaska. In the midst of this
nightmare, browbeaten police detective Meyer Landsman investigates the
murder of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy who happens to be the disgraced
son of Sitka's most powerful rabbi. No one wants this case solved, from
Landsman's boss (his ex-wife, Bina) to the FBI, but our Yiddish Marlowe
keeps digging, uncovering apocalypse in the making. Chabon manipulates his
bulging plot masterfully, but what makes the novel soar is its humor and
humanity. Even without grasping all the Yiddish wordplay that seasons the
delectable prose, readers will fall headlong into the alternate universe of
Chabon's Sitka, where black humor is a kind of antifreeze necessary to
support life. And when Meyer, in the end, must "weigh the fates of the
Jews, of the Arabs, of the whole unblessed and homeless planet" against a
promise made to a grieving mother, it's clear that this parallel world
smells a lot like home. Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay ran
the book-award table in 2000, and this one just may be its equal. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the author of two collections of stories for adults, ‘A Model World’ and ‘Werewolves in their Youth’; a children’s book, ‘Summerland’; the novels ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh’, ‘Wonder Boys’ (which has been made into a film) and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’ (winner of the Pulitzer Prize); and the short story ‘The Final Solution’. He co-wrote the screenplay for Spiderman 2. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire and Playboy. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their four children.
