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Sunday, December 24, 2017

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
A junkie is murdered. His next door neighbor in the flophouse motel is down-and-out police detective Landsman, who wakes up beside “the shotglass he’s been dating recently.” Turns out the junkie was shot in the back of the head execution style by a small caliber automatic. And since all of the jews who live in Sitka, Alaska only have another few months before they are exiled into a world that will not take them, Landsman has to move fast.

Thus begins The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, a fascinating alternate history noir detective novel which ends up being a meditation on some of the concepts of judiasm and the self-made traps people and peoples find themselves unable to escape.

As a noir detective novel, this is high quality stuff, which embraces some cliché while defying others. As science fiction alternative history, the novel works well. As a piece of prose, the novel is beautifully written, with more great sentences packed into many paragraphs than many writers achieve in a lifetime. As a truly great novel wrestling with huge themes… Well, it tries quite hard. I’d be curious to know what others think, particular any jewish friends.

I suspect that Chabon may have been seen as a race traitor or an anti-semite by some; I did not find that to be the case, but then, I don’t actually know much about Jewish orthodoxy, and finding fault in one of the world’s major religions isn’t something I’m bothered by.

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