Nebula Award Best Novel Winner
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
by Michael Chabon
Summary
Michael Chabon imagines an alternate history in which Jewish refugees settled a temporary homeland in Sitka, Alaska, after World War II, and a hardboiled detective named Meyer Landsman investigates a murder in a flophouse as the district's reversion to Alaska looms. The novel marries noir detective fiction with alternate history and Yiddish culture in a snowbound setting. Chabon's inventive prose and melancholy wit made it a crossover literary success.
”
Historical Context & Significance
The Yiddish Policemen's Union won the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Locus awards, an unusual sweep for a novel by a mainstream literary author.