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 non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, THE NETANYAHUS is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics – ‘An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Incident in the History of a Very Famous Family’ that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.
People have asked if the book is about Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. The character in the book is Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion Netanyahu. It is a highly fictionalized account of the very true time in the late 1950s when Benzion Netanyahu arrived in the United States seeking an academic position.
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
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