The Netanyahus
An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
-
-
3.8 • 169 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
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
“[C]onstructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant…The vision in this book is deeply original.”—Colm Tóibín
This Pulitzer prize-winning novel blends fiction and reality for a clever and political take on the campus novel that centers around Jewish history and identity.
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 historical 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.
Customer Reviews
Satire but no Pulitzer
Creative and at times hilarious satire, but not worthy of the Pulitzer unless you are taken in by its theory on anti semitism. The letter at the end says it all!
Gush, Gush, Gah
A book whose prose pyrotechnics the reader MUST gush over as the author razzle-dazzles one with his overbearing brilliance. A few humorous sections, but mostly a tedious, cynical, bitter mess. Gushing required by the intelligentsia or your lack of sophistication will be on record for all pity.
Pulitzer Prize book 2022
I loved this book. Love that it was bases on a true event.