The Yiddish Policemen's Union

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 revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown.

But 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. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life--and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder--right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage--and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

Author: Michael Chabon
Publisher: Harper
Published: 05/01/2007
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.49lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.42w x 1.36d
ISBN: 9780007149827

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.1
Point Value: 20
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 125012 / Yiddish Policemen's Union


Award: John W. Campbell Memorial Award - Second Place
Award: Locus Awards - Winner
Award: Edgar Allan Poe Awards - Nominee
Award: ALA Notable Books - Winner
Award: Nebula Awards - Winner
Award: Book Sense Book of the Year Award - Honor Book
Award: Hugo Award - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2005 pg. 94
Library Journal Prepub Alert 01/01/2007 pg. 66
Publishers Weekly 03/05/2007 pg. 34
Library Journal 03/01/2007 pg. 68
Kirkus Reviews 03/01/2007 pg. 185
Booklist 03/01/2007 pg. 38
Entertainment Weekly 05/11/2007 pg. 76
Vanity Fair 05/01/2007 pg. 80
Booksense Picks 05/01/2007 pg. 1
People Weekly 05/21/2007 pg. 58
Newsweek 05/07/2007 pg. 63
Booklist 05/01/2007 pg. 7
Men's Journal 06/01/2007 pg. 34
New York Review of Books 06/14/2007 pg. 22
Commonweal 09/28/2007 pg. 26
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/02/2007 pg. 12
Entertainment Weekly 12/28/2007 pg. 144
LJ Best Books of Year 12/01/2007 pg. 72
Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/2008 pg. 10
Lambda Book Report 08/01/2008 pg. 26

About the Author
Chabon, Michael: -

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.