'' The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family'' is a 2021 novel by Joshua Cohen. It was awarded the 2022

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...

. The book centers on a fictionalized account of

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...

's encounter with

Benzion Netanyahu Benzion Netanyahu (; born Benzion Mileikowsky; March 25, 1910 – April 30, 2012)''Contemporary Authors Online'', Gale, 2009. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, 2009. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/B ...

and his family, including his son,

Benjamin Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who has served as the prime minister of Israel since 2022, having previously held the office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021. Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime min ...

, at an upstate New York college in the late 1950s, blending history, fiction, and humor.

Synopsis

The novel's protagonist, Ruben Blum, is a historian at the fictional Corbin College in the fictional town of Corbindale, New York in the late 1950s. He is the first and only Jewish person at Corbin. He finds himself perpetually navigating

microaggression Microaggression is a term used for commonplace verbal, behavioral or environmental slights, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward members of marginalized groups. The term was coine ...

s of his department chair, Dr. Morse. One of the humiliating incidents involves making Blum portray Santa Claus at the college's Christmas party because “it’ll free up the people who actually celebrate the holiday to enjoy themselves.” Because he is Jewish, Dr. Morse involuntarily appoints Blum to the hiring committee for a Jewish historian by the name of

. The hiring committee assignment takes an unexpected twist when Benzion arrives for lunch at Blum's residence, not alone but with the unannounced company of his audacious wife and feral three children ( Yonatan,

Benjamin Benjamin ( ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the younger of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel, and Jacob's twe ...

, and Iddo). The Netanyahus' visit shakes up Ruben's life, leaving him to navigate a whirlwind of events beyond his control.

Audiobook

Cohen recorded an audiobook version with

Pushkin Industries Pushkin Industries is an American publisher of podcasts and audiobooks. It was started in 2018 by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. As of 2021, it hosts over 25 podcasts. History The company was co-founded in 2018 by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob ...

, which features voice work from

David Duchovny David William Duchovny ( ; born ) is an American actor, writer, and musician. He received his breakthrough with the role of Fox Mulder in The X-Files franchise, earning Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards a ...

Reception and accolades

Critical reception

In a positive review for ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'', Taffy Brodesser-Akner referred to the novel as "an infuriating, frustrating, pretentious piece of work — and also absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever". David Isaacs praised Cohen's wit at the sentence level but questioned his success in conveying a sense of depth, describing the novel in ''

Literary Review ''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years b ...

'' as "erudite, occasionally hilarious and eventually unhinged."

Awards and honors

''The Netanyahus'' won the 2022

. The Pulitzer citation for the novel described it as "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." It also won the 2021

National Jewish Book Award The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1943, is an American organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature. The goal of the council, as stated on its website, is "to promote the reading, writing and publishing of qual ...

for Fiction.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Netanyahus, The 2021 American novels Novels set in the 1950s Novels set in the United States New York Review Books books Cultural depictions of Benjamin Netanyahu Pulitzer Prize for Fiction–winning works National Jewish Book Award winners