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 the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end. 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. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage. At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

Set in the Jewish homeland of ... Alaska, this is a brilliantly original novel from Michael Chabon, author of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS.

In The Yiddish Policemen's Union, his first major novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon delivers a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption. This special limited first edition is personally signed by the author and numbered. The jacketed hardcover is packaged in a handcrafted wooden slipcase which is shrinkwrapped. A must-have for collectors.

In a world in which Alaska, rather than Israel, has become the homeland for the Jews following World War II, Detective Meyer Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner Berko investigate the death of a heroin-addled chess prodigy.

The brilliantly original new novel from Michael Chabon, author of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS. What if, as Franklin Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska - and not Israel - had become the homeland for the Jews after the Second World War? In Michael Chabon's Yiddish-speaking 'Alyeska', Orthodox gangs in side-curls and knee breeches roam the streets of Sitka, where Detective Meyer Landsman discovers the corpse of a heroin-addled chess prodigy in the flophouse Meyer calls home. Marionette strings stretch back to the hands of charismatic Rebbe Gold, leader of a sect that seems to have drawn its mission statement from the Cosa Nostra. Meyer is determined to unsnarl the meaning behind the murder. Even if that means surrendering his badge and his dignity to the chief of Sitka's homicide unit - his fearsome ex-wife Bina. A novel of colossal ambition and heart, THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION interweaves a homage to the stylish menace of 1940s film noir with a bittersweet fable of identity, home and faith.

Roth and Celebrity is composed of 10 original essays that consider the vexed and ambivalent relationship between Philip Roth and his own celebrity as revealed both in personal interviews as well as in the fiction that spans his publishing history.

Michael Chabon’s America: Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces is the first comprehensive scholarly collection analyzing the work of acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. At its core, the book demonstrates how Chabon uses a broad range of styles and genres, including detective and comic book fiction and essays and other works of nonfiction, to get at the heart of defining the American experience. As a result, Michael Chabon’s America provides context and exploration for understanding the author’s work from cultural, historical, and stylistic perspectives by scholars from five continents, revealing Chabon’s deep global impact.

An expose of the secret identities of famous superheroes explains how theme dilemmas faced by iconic characters reflect the evolution of Judaism in American culture and the Jewish identities of famous comic book writers.

A spellbinding yarn set a thousand years ago along the ancient Silk Road, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay 'It's been a while since I had such fun reading a book' Daily Telegraph 'Readers might feel they have reached the book equivalent of the Promised Land' The Times GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD is set in the Kingdom of Arran, in the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, A.D. 950. It tells the tale of two wandering adventurers and unlikely soulmates, variously plying their trades as swords for hire, horse thieves and con artists - until fortune entangles them in the myriad schemes and battles that follow a bloody coup in the medieval Jewish empire of the Khazars. Hired as escorts for a fugitive prince, they quickly find themselves half-willing generals in a mad rebellion, struggling to restore the prince's family to the throne. As their increasingly outrageous exploits unfold, they encounter a wondrous elephant, wily Rhadanite tradesmen, whores, thieves, soldiers, an emperor, and discover the truth about their young royal charge. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this is a novel brimming with raucous humour and cliff-hanging suspense, combining the spirit of The Arabian Nights with the action of The Three Musketeers.

Surveys the current state of Jewish American and Holocaust literatures as well as approaches to teaching them. What does it mean to read, and to teach, Jewish American and Holocaust literatures in the early decades of the twenty-first century? New directions and new forms of expression have emerged, both in the invention of narratives and in the methodologies and discursive approaches taken toward these texts. The premise of this book is that despite moving farther away in time, the Holocaust continues to shape and inform contemporary Jewish American writing. Divided into analytical and pedagogical sections, the chapters present a range of possibilities for thinking about these literatures. Contributors address such genres as biography, the graphic novel, alternate history, midrash, poetry, and third-generation and hidden-child Holocaust narratives. Both canonical and contemporary authors are covered, including Michael Chabon, Nathan Englander, Anne Frank, Dara Horn, Joe Kupert, Philip Roth, and William Styron. Victoria Aarons is O.R. & Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of English at Trinity University. She is the author of several books, including Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction and The Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow. Holli Levitsky is Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies at Loyola Marymount University and Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. She is the author of Summer Haven: The Catskills, the Holocaust, and the Literary Imagination.

The 2012 American Jewish Year Book, “The Annual Record of American Jewish Civilization,” contains major chapters on Jewish secularism (Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar), Canadian Jewry (Morton Weinfeld, David Koffman, and Randal Schnoor), national affairs (Ethan Felson), Jewish communal affairs (Lawrence Grossman), Jewish population in the United States (Ira Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky), and World Jewish population (Sergio DellaPergola). These chapters provide insight into major trends in the North American and world Jewish community. The volume also acts as a resource for the American Jewish community and for academics studying that community by supplying obituaries and lists of Jewish Federations, Jewish Community Centers, national Jewish organizations, Jewish overnight camps, Jewish museums, Holocaust museums, local and national Jewish periodicals, Jewish honorees, major recent events in the American Jewish community, and academic journals, articles, websites, and books. The volume should prove useful to social scientists and historians of the American Jewish community, Jewish communal workers, the press, and others interested in American and Canadian Jews.​

Traces the history of Jews in the United States, providing demographics and information on their influence on and participation in American culture, leading figures, organizations, and communities.

This book is concerned with the “impious” Holocaust fictions of four contemporary Jewish American novelists. It argues that their work should not be seen as insensitive, but rather as explorations of various forms of renewal.

Ben-Yehuda’s vision of a modern Hebrew eventually came to animate a large part of the Jewish world, and gave new confidence and pride to Jewish youth during the most difficult period of modern history, infusing Zionism with a dynamic cultural content. This book examines the many changes that occurred in the transition to Modern Hebrew, acquainting new students of the language with its role as a model for other national revivals, and explaining how it overcame many obstacles to become a spoken vernacular. The author deals primarily with the social and political use of the language and does not cover literature. Also discussed are the dilemmas facing the language arising from the fact that Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora “don’t speak the same language,” while Israeli Arabs and Jews often do.

Featuring 37 essays by distinguished literary scholars, A Companion to the American Novel provides a comprehensive single-volume treatment of the development of the novel in the United States from the late 18th century to the present day. Represents the most comprehensive single-volume introduction to this popular literary form currently available Features 37 contributions from a wide range of distinguished literary scholars Includes essays on topics and genres, historical overviews, and key individual works, including The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Beloved, and many more.