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Like Haruki Murakami in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1991), Chabon plays with the conventions of the Chandlerian private-eye novel, but that's only one ingredient in an epic-scale alternate-history saga of Jewish life since World War II. The premise draws on an obscure historical fact: Franklin Delano Roosevelt once proposed that Alaska, not Israel, become the homeland for Jews after the war. In Chabon's telling, that's exactly what happened, except, inevitably, it hasn't gone as planned: the U.S. government now has enacted a policy that will evict all Jews without proper papers from Sitka, the center of Jewish Alaska. In the midst of this nightmare, browbeaten police detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy who happens to be the disgraced son of Sitka's most powerful rabbi. No one wants this case solved, from Landsman's boss (his ex-wife, Bina) to the FBI, but our Yiddish Marlowe keeps digging, uncovering apocalypse in the making.
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.
該小說以一段模糊的歷史事實為背景展開。美國總統(tǒng)羅斯福曾經(jīng)提議二戰(zhàn)后把阿拉斯加作為猶太人的祖國，而這一提議在這部小說中成為現(xiàn)實。在小說里，猶太人一直住在阿拉斯加的Sitka，但是美國政府突然出臺一個新政策，要把沒有有效證件的人逐出這里。人們處于一片慌亂之中。而我們的主人公--蘭德斯曼警探發(fā)現(xiàn)，住在他隔壁的國際象棋神童遭到神秘暗殺，但是他的上司和聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局都不允許人插手此事。于是，蘭德斯曼開始了他的調(diào)查旅程……
About Author
Michael Chabon was born May 24, 1963 in Washington, D.C. He earned his undergraduate degree in English at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. His major works include The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay which won a lot of prizes such the New York Society Library Prize for Fiction, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal and the Pulitzer Prize.
邁克爾·查本，1963年5月24日生于美國華盛頓，1984年在匹茲堡大學獲得英語專業(yè)學士學位。主要作品包括《匹茲堡迷思錄》、《天生奇才》和《卡維利亞與克萊奇遇記》等。其中《卡維利亞與克萊奇遇記》獲獎無數(shù)，包括紐約學會圖書館小說獎、海灣地區(qū)圖書評論獎、聯(lián)邦俱樂部金獎和普利策小說獎。
(實習生 江巍）
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