Reading List: The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon

Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to go with a novel and an author that I had heard about for years was absolutely phenomenal, Michael Chabon and his 2007 work The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

This was a fantastic read for many reasons, not least of which would be Chabon’s exacting use of language, but also his captivating use of the smallest bit of world building to give us an expansive universe that makes sense. Meyer Landsman is one of the all time great characters I have encountered in the books I have read, and his continual interactions with his ex-wife and cousin made for a most entertaining read. For those who don’t want the novel spoiled too much I won’t give away too many plot details, but it probably does help to mention that this book is set in an alternate timeline from our own in which the persecuted Jews of the Holocaust were re-settled not in Israel in 1948 but in Sitka, Alaska, on a small island near the south of the state. However when we meet the main characters this is threatened with “reversion” as the time limit has expired for the area to become once again part of Alaska.

On the face of it this novel reads like a classic detective story, with Meyer being introduced and the discovery of the body happening immediately. Investigating the local chess scene (a board was found near the body with an unfinished game), Meyer determines that this was Mendel Shpilman, a person of much importance within the world of the mafia in Sitka. Meyer conducts his investigation through several hilarious set pieces, including getting into the mother of Shpilman’s car at the funeral and going out to a strange place that is controlled by the Verbovers (the mafia) and getting caught by the local police. Behind this place is a diabolical plot that Meyer discovers a bit too late to prevent, but he does end up solving the murder.

As stated this was one of the most unusual and unique novels I have ever encountered, and with each page I was blown away by Chabon’s use of language. He even included a Glossary of terms, both made-up and real, of Yiddish in the back of the book to help readers such as myself. Also included in my edition of the novel was Chabon’s 1997 Harper’s essay “Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts” where some of these ideas were beginning to be fleshed out. If I did have one criticism of the novel, it would be I wish we had more discovery of the other things changed in this world. We get a brief mention that Berlin was destroyed by a nuclear weapon in 1946 and a few other tantalizing details of other nations but we don’t get a full picture of how different this world is from our own. But that’s a minor quibble with what is overall an excellent story and one I would highly recommend to anyone wanting an excellent detective yarn that also dabbles in what-if type scenarios. Thanks for joining me on this reading adventure.