Reviews
"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 "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, The Wall 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 "[ 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 by the momentum of its prose....This is a surprising novel, full of quirks and explosive moments... --Christopher Shrimpton, The Spectator "No one writing in English today is more gifted than Joshua Cohen. Every page of The Netanyahus --an historical account of a man left out of history, a wickedly funny fable of the return of the repressed--crackles with Cohen's high style and joyride intelligence." --Nicole Krauss " The Netanyahus is constructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant. Some scenes are funny beyond belief. But even when moments in the book are sharp or melancholy, they keep an undertone of witty and ironic observation. The vision in this book is deeply original, making clear what a superb writer Joshua Cohen is." --Colm Tóibín "A domestic sitcom farce, a ferocious academic sendup. And also, in contrast to an entire generation of fastidious timidities (Doctorow, Mailer, et al.), a rousing lecture on Jewish history leading to Zionism. . . . The drive to quarrel with a character is only one of the delights of Cohen's shrewd, exuberant, exhilarating and merry novel." --Cynthia Ozick "Cohen's writing is vibrant even when ruminating on esoteric details on Jewish identity theories. . . . This blistering portrait is great fun." -- Publishers Weekly "Cohen's new book is among his best: a fastidious and very funny book that is one of the most purely pleasurable works of fiction I've read in ages." --Jon Day, Financial Times, "A domestic sitcom farce, a ferocious academic sendup. And also, in contrast to an entire generation of fastidious timidities (Doctorow, Mailer, et al.), a rousing lecture on Jewish history leading to Zionism. . . . The drive to quarrel with a character is only one of the delights of Cohen's shrewd, exuberant, exhilarating and merry novel." --Cynthia Ozick "Cohen's new book is among his best: a fastidious and very funny book that is one of the most purely pleasurable works of fiction I've read in ages." --Jon Day, Financial Times "Cohen's writing is vibrant even when ruminating on esoteric details on Jewish identity theories. . . . This blistering portrait is great fun." -- Publishers Weekly "No one writing in English today is more gifted than Joshua Cohen. Every page of The Netanyahus --an historical account of a man left out of history, a wickedly funny fable of the return of the repressed--crackles with Cohen's high style and joyride intelligence." --Nicole Krauss " The Netanyahus is constructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant. Some scenes are funny beyond belief. But even when moments in the book are sharp or melancholy, they keep an undertone of witty and ironic observation. The vision in this book is deeply original, making clear what a superb writer Joshua Cohen is." --Colm Tóibín, "No one writing in English today is more gifted than Joshua Cohen. Every page of The Netanyahus --an historical account of a man left out of history, a wickedly funny fable of the return of the repressed--crackles with Cohen's high style and joyride intelligence." --Nicole Krauss " The Netanyahus is constructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant. Some scenes are funny beyond belief. But even when moments in the book are sharp or melancholy, they keep an undertone of witty and ironic observation. The vision in this book is deeply original, making clear what a superb writer Joshua Cohen is." --Colm Tóibín "A domestic sitcom farce, a ferocious academic sendup. And also, in contrast to an entire generation of fastidious timidities (Doctorow, Mailer, et al.), a rousing lecture on Jewish history leading to Zionism. . . . The drive to quarrel with a character is only one of the delights of Cohen's shrewd, exuberant, exhilarating and merry novel." --Cynthia Ozick "Cohen is an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the most prodigious in American fiction today. . . . A crystalline novelist with a journalistic openness to the world." --James Wood, The New Yorker "Cohen's writing is vibrant even when ruminating on esoteric details on Jewish identity theories. . . . This blistering portrait is great fun." -- Publishers Weekly "Cohen's new book is among his best: a fastidious and very funny book that is one of the most purely pleasurable works of fiction I've read in ages." --Jon Day, Financial Times, "Cohen's writing is vibrant even when ruminating on esoteric details on Jewish identity theories. . . This blistering portrait is great fun." -- Publisher's Weekly, "No one writing in English today is more gifted than Joshua Cohen. Every page of The Netanyahus --an historical account of a man left out of history, a wickedly funny fable of the return of the repressed--crackles with Cohen's high style and joyride intelligence." --Nicole Krauss " The Netanyahus is constructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant. Some scenes are funny beyond belief. But even when moments in the book are sharp or melancholy, they keep an undertone of witty and ironic observation. The vision in this book is deeply original, making clear what a superb writer Joshua Cohen is." --Colm Tóibín "A domestic sitcom farce, a ferocious academic sendup. And also, in contrast to an entire generation of fastidious timidities (Doctorow, Mailer, et al.), a rousing lecture on Jewish history leading to Zionism. . . . The drive to quarrel with a character is only one of the delights of Cohen's shrewd, exuberant, exhilarating and merry novel." --Cynthia Ozick "Cohen is an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the most prodigious in American fiction today. . . . A crystalline novelist with a journalistic openness to the world." --James Wood, The New Yorker "Cohen's writing is vibrant even when ruminating on esoteric details on Jewish identity theories. . . . This blistering portrait is great fun." -- Publishers Weekly "Cohen's new book is among his best: a fastidious and very funny book that is one of the most purely pleasurable works of fiction I've read in ages." --Jon Day, Financial Times " 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 "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, "No one writing in English today is more gifted than Joshua Cohen. Every page of The Netanyahus --an historical account of a man left out of history, a wickedly funny fable of the return of the repressed--crackles with Cohen's high style and joyride intelligence." --Nicole Krauss " The Netanyahus is constructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant. Some scenes are funny beyond belief. But even when moments in the book are sharp or melancholy, they keep an undertone of witty and ironic observation. The vision in this book is deeply original, making clear what a superb writer Joshua Cohen is." --Colm Tóibín "A domestic sitcom farce, a ferocious academic sendup. And also, in contrast to an entire generation of fastidious timidities (Doctorow, Mailer, et al.), a rousing lecture on Jewish history leading to Zionism. . . . The drive to quarrel with a character is only one of the delights of Cohen's shrewd, exuberant, exhilarating and merry novel." --Cynthia Ozick "Cohen is an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the most prodigious in American fiction today. . . . A crystalline novelist with a journalistic openness to the world." --James Wood, The New Yorker "Cohen's writing is vibrant even when ruminating on esoteric details on Jewish identity theories. . . . This blistering portrait is great fun." -- Publishers Weekly "Cohen's new book is among his best: a fastidious and very funny book that is one of the most purely pleasurable works of fiction I've read in ages." --Jon Day, Financial Times " 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 "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 , like Cohen's previous novels, is driven by the momentum of its prose. It has a freewheeling, all-consuming style which frequently turns up unexpected delights. There are nicely odd verbs: 'A car came chunking down Evergreen'; Ruben's father-in-law 'bellied onto the carpet-runner' to examine a faulty socket. . . . This is a surprising novel, full of quirks and explosive moments, and, all in all, Dr Netanyahu proves a welcome guest." --Christopher Shrimpton, The Spectator "The first obligation, when turning to the work of the electrifying American writer Joshua Cohen, is to stress that he clearly is a genius. . . . 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, "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, The Wall 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 by the momentum of its prose. . . . This is a surprising novel, full of quirks and explosive moments." --Christopher Shrimpton, The Spectator "No one writing in English today is more gifted than Joshua Cohen. Every page of The Netanyahus --an historical account of a man left out of history, a wickedly funny fable of the return of the repressed--crackles with Cohen''s high style and joyride intelligence." --Nicole Krauss " The Netanyahus is constructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant. Some scenes are funny beyond belief. But even when moments in the book are sharp or melancholy, they keep an undertone of witty and ironic observation. The vision in this book is deeply original, making clear what a superb writer Joshua Cohen is." --Colm Tóibín "A domestic sitcom farce, a ferocious academic sendup. And also, in contrast to an entire generation of fastidious timidities (Doctorow, Mailer, et al.), a rousing lecture on Jewish history leading to Zionism. . . . The drive to quarrel with a character is only one of the delights of Cohen''s shrewd, exuberant, exhilarating and merry novel." --Cynthia Ozick "Cohen''s writing is vibrant even when ruminating on esoteric details on Jewish identity theories. . . . This blistering portrait is great fun." -- Publishers Weekly "Cohen''s new book is among his best: a fastidious and very funny book that is one of the most purely pleasurable works of fiction I''ve read in ages." --Jon Day, Financial Times "Cohen has performed a literary miracle of sorts, transforming the shadowy, dour figure of Benzion Netanyahu into the protagonist of an uproariously funny book. In its skewering of the small-mindedness of academic culture, The Netanyahus conjures up the hilarity of David Lodge, and in its piercing gaze and over-the-top, transgressive moves, it evokes the late Philip Roth. . . . The reader is likely to explode in laughter." --David N. Myers, Los Angeles Review of Books "Brilliant. . . [ The Netanyahus ] marries some madcap Rothian scene-making with a greater and uncomfortable plumbing of what it means, all these years later, to be Jewish in America." --Ross Barkan, The Baffler
