The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

by Michael Chabon (Author)
Key Phrases: penguin sweater, floatplane dock, cot frame, Mendel Shpilman, Peril Strait, Detective Landsman (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Chabon's storytelling, in this alternate history of a world where Jews were settled in Alaska after World War II, is vivid enough, with inventive metaphors packed in like tapestry threads, but Peter Riegert's versatile voice makes the invented society even more tangible. Told through the eyes of Meyer Landsman, a police detective investigating a murder, the novel occurs in a strange time to be a Jew, as several characters ruefully put it: the special Jewish district will soon be controlled by Alaska again. In a bonus interview on the last disc, Chabon relates his desire to write about a place where Yiddish was an official language. The book is shot through with Yiddish phrases and names, which melodically roll off Riegert's tongue. He gives Landsman and his tough but warmhearted partner Berko similar yet distinct gruff voices that contrast well with the effeminate-sounding sect leader and the Southern-accented Americans who come to start the land reversion process. Riegert's pacing increases the enjoyment of this expertly spun mystery.
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From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Elizabeth McCracken

What sort of writer is Michael Chabon? The question, especially considering his terrific new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, is complicated. Of course he's literary, author of the Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and other marvelous books of fiction. His work is page-turning and poignant; he is one of the best writers of English prose alive. But Chabon has an avowed interest in forms considered perhaps less than literary. He's edited two anthologies of pulp-inspired stories for McSweeney's, written a "story of detection" featuring Sherlock Holmes, and he "presents" a comic book quarterly starring one of the