What Is The Netanyahus Book About?

The Netanyahus' is this wild, darkly comic novel by Joshua Cohen that blends historical fiction with academic satire, and it’s way more fun than that description makes it sound. It’s loosely based on a real incident involving the Netanyahu family—yes, those Netanyahus—and their visit to a small American college in the 1960s. The story’s narrated by Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian who gets roped into hosting Benzion Netanyahu (father of the former Israeli PM) during a job interview. The book spirals into this chaotic clash of ideologies, with Blum’s quiet life upended by Netanyahu’s abrasive, polemical presence. Cohen’s writing crackles with wit, especially in the way he skewers academic pretensions and the absurdity of identity politics. The novel’s also deeply concerned with Jewish identity, assimilation, and the tension between scholarly detachment and real-world stakes. It won the Pulitzer, and honestly, it deserves the hype—it’s smart without being smug, hilarious but with this undercurrent of melancholy. I couldn’t put it down, partly because I kept laughing at Blum’s exasperated narration, but also because Cohen nails how tiny personal dramas collide with big historical forces.

What stuck with me, though, is how the book feels weirdly prescient. The Netanyahus’ ideological fervor and Blum’s ambivalence mirror today’s debates about Zionism, academia, and cultural belonging. It’s not a polemic, though; Cohen leaves room for ambiguity, letting the characters’ flaws and contradictions breathe. The ending’s abrupt in a way that initially frustrated me, but later I realized it’s perfect—history doesn’t wrap up neatly, and neither do these lives. If you like novels that are both intellectually meaty and genuinely entertaining (think Philip Roth meets campus farce), this one’s a gem.