Michael Chabon is another author I am grateful that I have discovered this year. Its premise had been taunting me for quite a while. I wouldn’t say it is an easy read but a beautiful one indeed.

A wonderful, weird noir set in the fictional Jewish homeland of Sitka, Alaska (where a temporary settlement, due to the destruction of the State of Israel in 1948, becomes permanent) amongst a Yiddish community inside a metropolis. The murder of a heroin addict sets off a beautifully-written polar (or alternate historical novel, if you like) and a dangerous investigation led by Meyer Landsman, a hard-boiled Chandleresque detective who only cares for the truth (and alcohol). But slowly – with the help of his cousin and his ex and a Tlingit police chief – he unravels something much bigger. At times it feels like a Marlowe investigation, at others a Philip K. Dick novel, you end up feeling sympathetic to the the trio of gumshoes trying to solve the riddle as if it were a chess game. And chess is fundamental in the context of all the novel’s intricacies.

Chabon is an excellent writer who weaves his plot with an amazing tapestry of politics, Orthodox fundamentalists-cum-gangsters, promises of Messiah (the Tzadik ha-Dor), Judaism, subtle criticisms of the victim-complex of Jews, chess, absent parents, violence and murders.

I added Moonglow (which luckily I found in the latest local book sale spree) to my TBR pile for this year.

Definitely one of my best reads of 2019.