作品情報
シトカの雨とイディッシュ語の街で、殺人事件は国家と信仰の幻影へつながっていく。
マイケル・チャボンによる長編。第二次世界大戦後のユダヤ人避難地がアラスカに置かれた世界で、殺人事件と共同体の期限切れが交錯する。
レビュー要約
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緻密な改変史設定とノワールの語り口が高く評価されている。言葉遣いの濃さや政治的背景の複雑さを楽しむ読者に強く響く作品である。
書籍情報
- 出版社
- HarperCollins
- 発売日
- 2007-05-01
- ページ数
- 432ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 15.54 x 3.38 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780007149827
- ISBN-10
- 9780007149827
- 価格
- 2776 JPY
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Mystery/Hard-Boiled
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.
Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.
レビュー
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Such originality!
This is the first Michael Chabon I've read and I felt at sea for the first five pages or so. After that I was hooked. I particularly love the originality of his descriptions. My book is full of short highlighted sections that are spot on but completely fresh.
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おもろいけど・・・・
洋書を読むとき、僕は８５～９５％理解できれば成功と考えてるけど、この本は７０％くらいしか理解できませんでした。理解できるところだけを評価すれば文句なしの５つ星ですが、実はクライマックスのシーンが全く理解できなくて、以降は斜め読みいったん無理やり読了させました。数年寝かせて、もう一度挑戦予定。 ただこの作者の力量はただものではないということは理解できたので、他の本も欲しいものリストに登録しました。 最初読んだとき６０％も理解できずに撃沈したラシュディのmidnights childrenも２回目で８５％理解できたので、この本ももう一度チャレンジします。
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ユダヤ人のユダヤ人によるユダヤ人のための…
安ホテルで、ジャンキーが殺され、ベッドサイドにはゲーム途中のチェス盤が残されていた。 同じユダヤ人で、同じホテルに住み、かつては自分もチェスをたしなんでいたLandsman は、 担当を外されながらも、幼なじみで相棒のBerkoとともに事件を追っていく。 単なる麻薬がらみと処理されそうになった事件は、 独自の戒律と絆を持つユダヤ人社会の宗教組織と深く関わり、 さらに大きな陰謀の影が浮かんできて… なにぶん背景的な知識も単語も、一般的なアメリカンミステリーとは全然異なり、 設定そのものもどこまで架空なのかも見当がつきません。 大きく事件が展開する後半は読み応えがありますが、 特にユダヤ人社会について描かれる前半は、原文で読むには難解すぎました…。
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Food for thought wrapped in a good crime story
This book is an unlikely but fascinating combination: First it appears to be just a crime story in a Chandler-like dark and desolate setting of a Jewish settlement in Alaska on the verge of being repossessed by the United States which will leave its inhabitants out in the cold. The main character is a burnt out quixotic policeman who starts an unwanted murder investigation while struggling with his own alcoholism, some dangerous and colorful adversaries and his ex wife who is now his superior. On second look the author manages to slip some major philosophical observations into the fast paced story: It seems to be quite possible to reconcile strict adherence to religious practices with a life of crime and utter brutality. How does this connection work? The reader learns a lot while being hugely entertained. The book is great, excellently written, a must for anybody who appreciates a good story which far transcends the usual scheme of tough cop -hard life - brutal action -justice prevails.
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Outstanding
This is a wonderful book - intelligent, humourous, thought-provoking and a great noir detective novel to boot. It encompasses multiple genres including alternative history and a crime thriller and others (no spoilers here!). Set in an alternate history 21st century it posits that if European Jews had been allowed to settle in Alaska (as actually proposed) then the world would have been a different place. And so it is - there are teasing glimpses of the changes wrought by a single change in our own history, but Chabon doesn't let this get in the way of a wonderful detective novel. The protagonist (Meyer Landsman) is on the face of it a cliche - a hard-drinking, maverick detective with claustrophobia) in the Alaskan Jewish homeland of Sitka; his ex-wife works with him and he is drawn into a case involving the death of a man staying in the same down-at-heel hotel as him. The plot is admittedly complex and we have to keep track of characters, different histories, plot twists and above all Yiddish slang. But Chabon handles this all expertly and despite being just over 400 pages I could not put this book down. The intelligence of the plotting and characterisation is helped immensely by Chabon's humourous prose. He has some wonderful lines, almost one every page that sticks in the mind. For example when describing the influx of refugees to Alaska he says: "In drafty, tin-roofed huts and barracks, they underwent six months of intensive acclimatization by a crack team of fifteen billion mosquitoes working under contract with the US interior department." Just one of a whole host of lines that had me laughing out loud. And he's so inventive - the phrase "The Frozen Chosen" to describe the Alaskan Jews is used only once in the whole book, whereas a less able author would have re-used it over and over again (it's so good). I won't divulge any details of the plot, save to say that as with all great noir thrillers it leads us where we don't expect. The characters are well sketched and the ending is very satisfying. Even at the end you'll realise that the title (which crops up once in the book) has more than one meaning. I'll definitely of his work after this stunning book, which is the best thing I've read all year.
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ideal para estudiantes de ingles avanzado
como regalo es perfecto para estudiantes de ingles avanzado, además de ser muy interesante el tema del libro. . .
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Good
The book is good, but it gets quite boring due to its length
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A delightful, hidden treasure of a book
What prose, what imagination. Interesting story, compounded to a blissful journey with Chabon's unending leaps of fantastic metaphors and similes.
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