Sean’s Blog

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

This week I finished Michael Chabon’s book, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.  The book is a really interesting mix of a hard-boiled detective novel and an alternate history.  While I’ve never been a big fan of the detective novel genre, I loved the world building that took place in the book.

The basic premise of the story is a murder mystery.  A detective finds a dead junkie in his building and the resulting investigation takes him from Hasidic crime families to messianic Zionists and international politics.  I won’t go too much into the story as discovering all this is a lot of the fun of reading it.

The big twist though is that it takes place in Sitka, Alaska.  But this isn’t the Sitka of today, it’s a Sitka that might have been.  Back in the late 1930’s FDR’s Secretary of State Harold Ickes proposed moving the Jews of Europe away from the persecution of the Nazis to the not yet state of Alaska.  This was actually proposed in the Slattery Report.

Chabon plays this alternate history through with a Jewish pseudo state in Alaska that is on the verge of being reabsorbed into the United States.  In this history, the Palestinians had pushed the Jews out of Palestine and modern Israel had never been founded.  Throw in Zionists, evangelical Americans, a fictional Hasidic crime family and chess and you have the makings of a really good novel.

I really enjoyed The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.  Not having a lot of experience with detective novels, I don’t know how much a crime novel fan would like it, but Chabon has a great way of playing with language and a great imagination.  Get ready to break out your Yiddish dictionaries as well, because the book is full of it.  I would highly recommend this book if you are looking for a interesting read.