's the body that turned up in a nearby room , a onetime chess prodigy who appears to have major connections with some big shots -- machers , in the local Yiddish lingo . There 's his ex-wife , now his boss -- at least until the department is disbanded -- and his partner , a half-Jewish , half-Tlingit named Berko who 's far more responsible than Landsman . And there are a host of old enemies with long memories , particularly when Landsman decides to root around the dead chess player 's case . Landsman 's world is fiction , of course , a product of Michael Chabon 's imagination . Chabon 's new book , `` The Yiddish Policeman 's Union '' -LRB- HarperCollins -RRB- , combines Landsman 's hard-boiled detective 's terrain with the landscape of alternate history , one in which world events take a startling turn . The story is rooted in fact , the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chabon -LRB- `` The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay '' -RRB- observes . Chabon had written an article about the decline of Yiddish , and the reaction to the piece -- some of it very negative
ATLANTA , Georgia -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- It was one of the greatest humanitarian acts in history . Pondering an imaginary Yiddish-speaking place produced `` The Yiddish Policemen 's Union , '' says Michael Chabon . At the beginning of World War II , as the Nazis tightened their grip on Europe , the U.S. government allowed millions of Jews to resettle from their homes in Poland and Russia to southeastern Alaska , along the panhandle . Two million Jews had died at the hands of the Nazi scourge , but millions more were saved as the Federal District of Sitka , Alaska , became the new Jewish homeland -- all the more important when the fledgling State of Israel went down to defeat in 1948 . However , 60 years later , Sitka is about to be returned to local jurisdiction , and the island 's Jews -- including a noted detective , Meyer Landsman -- are wondering where to go next . The Jewish people , forever rootless , will have to wander some more . Landsman 's got other problems , too . He 's rootless himself , biding his time in a seedy hotel . There