The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

Joshua Cohen’s novel is a comic, intellectual whirlwind that uses one awkward academic visit to interrogate identity, power, and historical narrative. The premise is deceptively small, but Cohen expands it into a sharp critique of institutions and the stories they legitimise. The narrator’s perspective is both incisive and self-undermining, generating humour that is as uncomfortable as it is funny. The book plays with genre, slipping between campus satire, historical reflection, and philosophical riff. Cohen’s sentences can be exuberantly long, full of digressions that feel like thinking in real time. Beneath the comedy is a serious interest in who gets to define history—especially when history becomes brand. The novel also captures the absurd performance of expertise, and the quiet cruelties of gatekeeping. It’s densely packed but surprisingly propulsive. You finish entertained, slightly scorched, and newly suspicious of “official” narratives. A brilliantly irritating, brilliant book.