DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. In the new novel The Netanyahus, the American writer Joshua Cohen offers a fictionalized version of a real-life visit to an American campus by the father of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Our critic-at-large John Powers says the book, which is just out from New York Review Books, pulls off the neat trick of being a genuinely funny book about genuinely serious things.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: The current political environment may be nirvana for social media zealots. But for novelists, it s a sinkhole. Even as they hope to engage in today s hot public debates, they struggle to turn such engagement into fiction that doesn t preach to the choir or feels dated the moment it s published. These pitfalls are neatly avoided by Joshua Cohen s The Netanyahus, which is subtitled An Account Of A Minor And Ultimately Even Negligible Episode In The History Of A Very Famous Family. Riffing freely on a true story, this brilliant and hilar
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The following is an excerpt from Joshua Cohen’s new novel,
The Netanyahus, out next week in the UK from Fitzcarraldo Editions, and on June 22 in the US from New York Review Books. “
The Netanyahus,” writes Colm Tóibín, “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.”