Genre Fiction
![Joshua Cohen - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B00QN5L4ME.jpg)
The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2021
A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021
"Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I've read in what feels like forever." -Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Book Review
Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian-but not an historian of the Jews-is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.
Editorial Reviews
"A mordant, linguistically deft historical novel about the ambiguities of the Jewish-American experience, presenting ideas and disputes as volatile as its tightly-wound plot" - The Pulitzer Prize Citation, Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
"Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I've read in what feels like forever." -Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Book Review
"Riffing freely on a true story, this brilliant and hilarious new book takes a cozily familiar form, the campus novel, and turns it into a slyly oblique fable about history, identity and the conflicted heart of Jewishness, especially in America." -John Powers, Fresh Air
"With [The Netanyahus] Cohen proves himself not just America's most perceptive and imaginative Jewish novelist, but one of its best novelists full stop." -Sam Sacks, TheWall Street Journal
"With its tight time frame, loopy narrator, portrait of Jewish-American life against a semi-rural backdrop, and moments of cruel academic satire, The Netanyahus reads like an attempt, as delightful as it sounds, to cross-breed Roth's The Ghost Writer and Nabokov's Pale Fire." -Leo Robson, The Guardian
"With a blend of fiction and nonfiction, Joshua Cohen's dazzlingly smart campus comedy pursues lofty questions of history, religion and politics." -Shelf Awareness
"[The Netanyahus] is torrentially satisfying." -Jonny Diamond, Lit Hub
"Clever, funny, dark, deeply moving, full of references to everyone from Nabokov and the Marx Brothers to Jabotinsky and the late Harold Bloom, The Netanyahus is a joy to read." -David Herman, The Jewish Chronicle
"The Netanyahus. . . is a campus novel that is also a novel of ideas-a conjunction less common than one might expect. Luckily it's also very, very funny." -Len Gutkin,The Chronicle of Higher Education
"The Netanyahus, like Cohen's previous novels, is driven...
"Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I've read in what feels like forever." -Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Book Review
"Riffing freely on a true story, this brilliant and hilarious new book takes a cozily familiar form, the campus novel, and turns it into a slyly oblique fable about history, identity and the conflicted heart of Jewishness, especially in America." -John Powers, Fresh Air
"With [The Netanyahus] Cohen proves himself not just America's most perceptive and imaginative Jewish novelist, but one of its best novelists full stop." -Sam Sacks, TheWall Street Journal
"With its tight time frame, loopy narrator, portrait of Jewish-American life against a semi-rural backdrop, and moments of cruel academic satire, The Netanyahus reads like an attempt, as delightful as it sounds, to cross-breed Roth's The Ghost Writer and Nabokov's Pale Fire." -Leo Robson, The Guardian
"With a blend of fiction and nonfiction, Joshua Cohen's dazzlingly smart campus comedy pursues lofty questions of history, religion and politics." -Shelf Awareness
"[The Netanyahus] is torrentially satisfying." -Jonny Diamond, Lit Hub
"Clever, funny, dark, deeply moving, full of references to everyone from Nabokov and the Marx Brothers to Jabotinsky and the late Harold Bloom, The Netanyahus is a joy to read." -David Herman, The Jewish Chronicle
"The Netanyahus. . . is a campus novel that is also a novel of ideas-a conjunction less common than one might expect. Luckily it's also very, very funny." -Len Gutkin,The Chronicle of Higher Education
"The Netanyahus, like Cohen's previous novels, is driven...
Readers Top Reviews
Klara Starr
Hilarious + just what I needed to read today. I'd like to see more of Ruben Blum in the future. Apps my review must be min 20 words so I'll add: the world of academe felt authentic, if farcical, with strong notes of 'Wonder Boys'
Günther van EndertMr
Das Buch enttäuscht, wenn man es auf Grund seiner Annonce gekauft hat. Der Autor stellt sich übermäßig als eine der handelnden Personen selbst dar. Gut sind nur die Passagen über BenZion Netanyahu und seine Familie - ein übermäßig selbstbewusster Papa, eine relativ ungenierte Mama und drei Söhne, die man früher als Racker bezeichnet hätte. Klar wird aber, dass sie - so oder so - auch in ihrem erwachsenen Leben auffallen würden...
Silvery surfer
A thoroughly funny read but also very erudite and informative . Its encouraged me to buy other books by Joshua Cohen .
Alex
This is a difficult book to rate. As other reviewers have pointed out, it is full of historical inaccuracies and anachronisms. In a book based on real life events and well known historical characters, that is serious. Equally, the author has no real understanding of Zionist revisionism which is a shame since that is key to Benzion Netanyahu. However, what is well drawn is the contrast between the proud and the ambivalent Jew in upstate New York where there were no other Jews. I think Justin Cohen could have written a better book, a bit more sympathetic to Netanyahu and a bit less reverential to Harold Bloom (the hardly disguised model for Reuben Blum) but nonetheless it’s worth reading and some of the scenes are hilarious. Also I love the cover and the quality of the paper.
