num_pages: 414
description: 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.(front flap)
language: English
title: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
titlecomplete: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
characters: Berko Shemets, Itzik Zimbalist, Naomi Landsman, Hertz Shemets, Bina Gelbfish, Ester-Malke Shemets, Mendel Shpilman, Meyer Landsman, Alter Litvak
genres: Jewish, Literary Fiction, Novels, Science Fiction, Crime, Literature, Fantasy, Mystery, Fiction, Alternate History
ratings_count: 75760
places: Sitka, Alaska
awards: awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Hugo Award
category: Best Novel, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Nebula Award
category: Best Novel, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Locus Award
category: Best Science Fiction Novel, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Hammett Prize, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: California Book Award
category: Fiction (Gold), awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: John W. Campbell Memorial Award
category: Best Science Fiction Novel, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Edgar Award
category: Best Novel, awardedAt: 1230796800000
name: Premio Ignotus
category: Mejor Novela Extranjera, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Sidewise Award
category: Long Form, awardedAt: 1262332800000
name: Seiun Award 星雲賞
category: Best Translated Long Form
publisher: HarperCollins