The Netanyahus imagines a fictionalised early encounter between a Jewish American academic and the real-life family of the future Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Set in upstate New York in the 1950s, it unfolds through the eyes of Ruben Blum. Blum is a Jewish historian struggling with tenure, identity, and the absurdities of late academic life. When the Netanyahu family arrives in his college town so that one of them can complete a degree, Blum is drawn into their discomfiting presence. 

Cohen writes with a satirical, restless prose that riffs on essay, memoir, comedy. The narrative interrogates American Jewish identity, Zionism, academia’s discontents, and the way family stories shape — and distort — history. Wittier than most campus novels, more radical than most family sagas, it has been the winner of major literary awards and widely reviewed as one of the standout books of its year.

This Fitzcarraldo edition brings Cohen’s electric style to a text that is both incisive and unclassifiable.