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''The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' is a 2007 novel by American author Michael Chabon. The novel is a detective story set in an alternative history version of the present day, based on the premise that during World War II, a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Sitka, Alaska, in 1941, and that the fledgling State of Israel was destroyed in 1948. The novel is set in Sitka, which it depicts as a large, Yiddish-speaking metropolis. ''The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' won a number of science fiction awards: the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for Best Novel. It was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. ==Setting== ''The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' is set in an alternative history version of the present day. The premise is that, contrary to real history, the United States voted to implement the 1940 Slattery Report, that recommended the provision of land in Alaska for the temporary refugee settlement of European Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis during World War II. The novel's divergence point from real history is revealed in the first dozen chapters to be the death of Anthony Dimond, Alaska Territory delegate to the U.S. Congress, in a car accident; Dimond was one of the congressmen responsible for preventing a vote on the report. It imagines a temporary independent Jewish settlement being created on the Alaskan coast. As a result, two million Jews are killed in the Holocaust,〔Michael Chabon, ''The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 29.〕 instead of the six million in reality. The setting is Sitka, Alaska, which has become a sprawling metropolis at the center of the Jewish settlement in Alaska. One of the city's landmarks is the 'Safety Pin', a tall building erected for the 1977 World Fair held in Sitka and a source of pride for its inhabitants. The lands across the border are populated primarily by Tlingit Alaska Natives, and there has been a history of friction between the Jews and the Tlingit, but also of intermarriage and cross-cultural contact; one of the novel's characters, Berko Shemets, is half Jewish, half Tlingit. Sitka's status as a Federal District has been granted for only sixty years, and the novel is set at the end of this period, as an evangelical Christian United States President is promising to go through with the 'Reversion' of Sitka to the State of Alaska. In the novel, the State of Israel is founded in 1948, but is destroyed after only three months in an alternative version of the Arab-Israeli War. Without Israel, Palestine is described as a mosaic of contending religious and secular nationalist groups locked in internecine conflict; Jerusalem is described as "a city of blood and slogans painted on the wall, severed heads on telephone poles".〔Chabon, ''Yiddish Policemen's Union'', p. 17.〕 The United States president believes in "divine sanction" for neo-Zionism, a movement seeking for Jews to reclaim Israel once again. Chabon describes the rest of world history only elliptically, but hints at enormous changes. Germany crushes the Soviet Union in 1942 and World War II continues until 1946, when Berlin is destroyed with nuclear weapons. Chabon refers to a 'Polish Free State' existing in 1950, and describes some characters as veterans of a lengthy 'Cuban War' in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy was not assassinated and married Marilyn Monroe; Orson Welles succeeded in making his film of ''Heart of Darkness''. And when describing the modern world, Chabon refers to a 'Third Russian Republic' and an independent Manchuria that has its own space program. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Yiddish Policemen's Union」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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