The Union of Jewish Policemen I would like to start my review with praise – this is one of the most interesting books that I read recently. And at the same time, one of the most controversial.

First of all, it is very difficult to determine its genre: despite the fact that in 2008 the Union of Jewish Policemen received the Hugo Prize, awarded for the best science fiction, it can hardly be attributed to this genre with a clear conscience. Most likely, this is a black detective story, because it’s not without reason that the book begins classically: a corpse of a man, a chess player under the name Emmanuel Lasker, was discovered in a hotel room. Nevertheless, almost immediately it becomes clear that the novel is based on the principle of an alternative story – it turns out that US President Franklin Roosevelt opened the doors of his country to Jews fleeing countries captured by Hitler. True, they had to settle in Alaska, leased to them, but this, nevertheless, significantly reduced the number of Holocaust victims. As a result, the state of Israel is absent on the Earth’s map (it was formed, but was defeated in the Arab-Israeli conflict), but on the territory of the northernmost state of America there is a prosperous colony whose inhabitants perform rituals of Judaism, wear paisas and black bowlers, and most importantly, they say and think in Hebrew – or rather, in Yiddish.

A typical representative of this mentality is the policeman Meir Landsman, who loves to drink and reason. It is he who is entrusted with investigating the murder committed in the hotel, thanks to which he is drawn into a whole chain of events and even into an international conspiracy. But despite all the intricacies of the plot, the main thing in the novel is precisely the stream of thoughts of this hero, who not only tries to find the criminal (however, he is a very successful detective), but also wants to solve his own problems.

What else do I like about this book? She is not politically correct. It is so politically incorrect that, it seems to me, write her representative of a different nationality, they could accuse him of anti-Semitism (however, as well as of glorifying Great Israel). But such an ambiguity as nothing else indicates that we are talking about the Big literature.

Well, now a little criticism. First of all, for me personally, this novel lacks an alternative story: I would like to know more details about the Third Russian Empire, as well as about John F. Kennedy, who happily escaped the assassination attempt in Dallas. However, perhaps these are my personal troubles, and the detective motives of this work will be closer to someone.

The second point is related to the translation. One can understand what a difficult task the translator faced: after all, in the original, the novel is full of words in Yiddish – the language of East European Jews, and the language of Michael Chabon himself (by the way, it seems to me that his last name would be more correct to translate as “Sheybon”) is clearly different in its originality . In addition, the translator Y. Balayan would need to further understand the realities of Judaism and to respect the Hebrew words, interspersed with which are also found in this novel. Perhaps then he would not replace the word “hupa” (Jewish wedding) with some incomprehensible term “chuppa” (and this is just one example). In addition, in some places the translation is simply messy – it seems that the linguist simply lost some of the words.

And yet I repeat – the book is good. And its main advantage is its special atmosphere, ironic and at the same time somewhat sad. It is this feeling that remains from reading the works of other great masters who wrote in Yiddish – first of all, Sholom Aleichem. Times have passed, the professions of heroes have changed, but features of a national character and mentality have survived. And it pleases, especially in our era, when there is a leveling of culture, the desire to negate the differences between cultures and races, instead of realizing the full value of such diversity.

There is information that the Coen Brothers intend to film the book The Union of Jewish Policemen. I think the project can be very interesting.