The Netanyahus

by Joshua Cohen

Genres: Biographical; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

2022 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction and named one of the notable books of 2021 by The New York Times



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. The New York Times described it as “Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever.”

Read by the author with David Duchovny and Ethan Herschenfeld lending their vocal talents to the audiobook.

Release date: June 22, 2021

Publisher: New York Review Books

Print pages: 248