Joshua Cohen

A true democracy sanctions the challenge of deeply held values and accepted societal standards, but in the United States today, some members of the political arena have abandoned respectful communication. Instead, contentious political discourse stalls Congress and, at times, erupts into violence. Negative personal attacks and outrageous character assassinations replace reasoned arguments and intelligent debate. Yet incivility has existed in various forms throughout American history, often preceding positive change. In March 2011, Washington State University hosted one of four major conferences held across the country. The purpose was to initiate discussion about the role of civility in American democracy. Leading scholars from a variety of disciplines participated, concentrating on five distinctive perspectives: history, religion, philosophy, art and architecture, and media. Comprised of 23 papers presented at the conference, Civility and Democracy in America offers insight from these seasoned experts.

From Joshua Cohen—winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize—comes one of the great comic epics of our time, newly restored in this definitive edition. On Christmas Eve, 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he rapidly ascends to international fame, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; while Israelien, the only truly Jewish Jew left, is increasingly stigmatized for refusing to perform his religion. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes a wanted man just as quickly as he had become a famous one. Elsewhere, in the not-too-distant future of our own, “real” world, another last Jew—the last living Holocaust survivor—sits snowbound in his Manhattan apartment, telling jokes that he only half-remembers. A final, melancholy witness, attempting to find the punch line for a century.

En forfatter er på jakt etter et sommerhus utenfor New York. Gjennom familieforbindelser blir han fra flere kanter forsøkt trukket inn i en krig han ikke kan holde på avstand. Mellom jødisk tilhørighet, skyld og penger begynner han å handle på vegne av noe større enn seg selv. Joshua Cohen er en av de mest toneangivende amerikanske forfatterne i sin generasjon, kjent for sin skarpe og ambisiøse prosa. Han mottok Pulitzerprisen i 2022 for Familien Netanyahu. Fortellingen er etterfulgt av en samtale mellom Joshua Cohen og Preben Jordal.

From the author of the 2022 Pulitzer winner The Netanyahus, one of the great comic epics of our time: the Last Jewish Novel about the Last Jew in the World. On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien, a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip, and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt… Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, “real” world, another last Jew—the last living Holocaust survivor—sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.

Familien Netanyahu kan beskrives som en blanding av en college roman for voksne og en historisk fantasy, med like deler komikk, satire og underliggende alvor, skrevet med et sjeldent litterært overskudd. Fortellingen utspiller seg mot slutten av 1950-tallet, der Ruben Blum, en enslig jødisk akademiker ved Corbin college, rett utenfor New York, får i oppgave å vurdere og tilrettelegge ankomsten til en polskfødt, Israel-basert akademiker ved navn Benzion Netanyahu. Han ankommer med kone og tre barn, hvorav den ene sønnen heter Benjamin. Blum er en sekulær jøde og vestlig orientert historiker og akademiker, med amerikansk historie som spesialfelt. I spennet mellom ham og Netanyahus teologiske og skjebneorienterte historieskriving, utfolder Cohen en både opplysende og humoristisk beskrivelse i kollisjonen mellom to verdensanskuelser, der komikk, satire, humor og tragedie er vevet sømløst sammen i et litterært overflødighetshorn av en roman. Cohen beveger seg fritt mellom fiksjon og fakta i denne romanen. Boken baserer seg på en anekdote fra Harold Bloom (Ruben Blum), som Cohen intervjuet i 2018, der han fortalte om den gang (1959) han var ledsager for en jødisk akademiker ved navn Benzion Netanyahu, som kom på besøk til Cornell University, New York. Med dette som utgangspunkt har Cohen skapt en historisk fiksjon, som blant mye annet også har en kritisk brodd mot samtidens religiøse og politiske landskap.

Den omtalade, kritikerhyllade och Pulitzerprisade romanen nu i pocket! Undertitel: En redogörelse för en mindre och när allt kommer omkring rentav försumbar episod i historien om en mycket känd familj." Fullkomligt genialiskt!" ExpressenVem är den mytomspunne Ben-Zion Netanyahu, som med hustru och tre söner (varav en heter Benjamin) anländer till Corbin College i den universitetstäta delstaten New York vintern 1960? Historikern Ruben Blum har blivit ålagd att vara hans värd och dras direkt in i en rad märkvärdiga händelser som utspelar sig kring den israeliske forskaren och snart är ingenting i den sömniga universitetsmiljön sig likt. Den kritikerhyllade och Pulitzerprisbelönade Netanyahus är en roman om judisk identitet, amerikanskt universitets­liv och om politiska utopier och tragedier. Med drastisk humor och ett språk som forsar fram över sidorna får Joshua Cohen 1900-­talets historia att mullra på ett helt nytt sätt. JOSHUA COHEN (född 1980) är en av sin gene­­rations mest hyllade amerikanska författare och har givit ut tio böcker i olika genrer. Netanyahus belönades bland annat med Pulitzerpriset 2022 och har sin upprinnelse i en ­anekdot som Cohen fick ­berättad för sig av den legenda­riske litteratur­kritikern Harold Bloom. Det är den första av Cohens böcker som översatts till svenska. GABRIEL ITKES-SZNAP är poet, litteratur­kritiker och översättare.

A collection of brand-new short stories written by prize-winning, bestselling writers and inspired by Kafka - published to commemorate the centenary of his death*Chosen as a 2024 highlight in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, New Statesman, Esquire and the New European*Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the great geniuses of twentieth-century literature. What happens when some of the most original literary minds of today take an idea, a mood or a line from his work and use it to spark something new? From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting. Inspired by the visionary imagination of a writer working one hundred years ago, they speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.

British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945–79 explores the extent to which the Holocaust has shaped British antifascism. The author tests assertions of an uncomplicated relationship between Holocaust memory and the imperative to resist postwar fascist revivals. For those with a scholarly interest in how antifascists confront their opponents, it is essential to understand whether the Holocaust has always been seen as an insurmountable barrier against fascism: is the idea of the genocide’s constant antifascist ‘use’ actually a dangerous assumption and, if so, what are the implications of this for ‘Antifa’ as its battle with the contemporary far right unfolds? This book provides a political and structural history of the Holocaust’s relationship to antifascist organisations and questions whether networks of solidarity formed around Holocaust memory, including analysing the impact of the genocide in Jewish antifascists’ motivations and rhetoric. It also assesses the Holocaust’s political capital in wider antifascism and connected anti-racism, including in defence of the Black and Asian communities increasingly victimised by fascists over the postwar period. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in antifascism, fascism, racism, and Jewish and left-wing history in Britain, and how these intersect with Holocaust consciousness.

Familien Netanyahu kan beskrives som en blanding av en college roman for voksne og en historisk fantasy, med like deler komikk, satire og underliggende alvor, skrevet med et sjeldent litterært overskudd. Fortellingen utspiller seg mot slutten av 1950-tallet, der Ruben Blum, en enslig jødisk akademiker ved Corbin college, rett utenfor New York, får i oppgave å vurdere og tilrettelegge ankomsten til en polskfødt, Israel-basert akademiker ved navn Benzion Netanyahu. Han ankommer med kone og tre barn, hvorav den ene sønnen heter Benjamin. Blum er en sekulær jøde og vestlig orientert historiker og akademiker, med amerikansk historie som spesialfelt. I spennet mellom ham og Netanyahus teologiske og skjebneorienterte historieskriving, utfolder Cohen en både opplysende og humoristisk beskrivelse i kollisjonen mellom to verdensanskuelser, der komikk, satire, humor og tragedie er vevet sømløst sammen i et litterært overflødighetshorn av en roman. Cohen beveger seg fritt mellom fiksjon og fakta i denne romanen. Boken baserer seg på en anekdote fra Harold Bloom (Ruben Blum), som Cohen intervjuet i 2018, der han fortalte om den gang (1959) han var ledsager for en jødisk akademiker ved navn Benzion Netanyahu, som kom på besøk til Cornell University, New York. Med dette som utgangspunkt har Cohen skapt en historisk fiksjon, som blant mye annet også har en kritisk brodd mot samtidens religiøse og politiske landskap.

PULITZERPRISET 2022"Det är fullkomligt genialiskt." Natalie Lantz, Expressen Vem är den mytomspunne Ben-Zion Netanyahu, som med hustru och tre söner (varav en heter Benjamin) anländer till Corbin College i den universitetstäta delstaten New York vintern 1960? Historikern Ruben Blum har blivit ålagd att vara hans värd och dras direkt in i en rad märkvärdiga händelser som utspelar sig kring den israeliske forskaren -- och snart är ingenting i den sömniga universitetsmiljön sig likt. Den kritikerhyllade och Pulitzerprisbelönade Netanyahus är en roman om judisk identitet, amerikanskt universitets­liv och om politiska utopier och tragedier. Med drastisk humor och ett språk som forsar fram över sidorna får Joshua Cohen 1900-­talets historia att mullra på ett helt nytt sätt. JOSHUA COHEN (född 1980) är en av sin gene­­rations mest hyllade amerikanska författare och har givit ut tio böcker i olika genrer. Netan­yahus belönades bland annat med Pulitzerpriset 2022 och har sin upprinnelse i en ­anekdot som Cohen fick ­berättad för sig av den legenda­riske litteratur­kritikern Harold Bloom. Det är den första av Cohens böcker som översatts till svenska. GABRIEL ITKES-SZNAP är poet, litteratur­kritiker och översättare." Ingen nu levande engelskspråkig författare är mer begåvad än Joshua Cohen." Nicole Krauss"[Cohen] är helt uppenbarligen ett geni." Leo Robson, The Guardian"[Boken] är ett verkligt kraftprov: tät, starkt skrattframkallande, den bästa roman jag läst i år [och] förmodligen den roligaste som någonsin skrivits om rivali­serande idéer om vad historia är." John Philips, The Times"Ett av de mest renodlat njutbara skönlitte­rära verk jag har läst på år och dagar." Jon Day, The Financial Times"Netanyahus är en generationsroman och en campusroman, den är en obeveklig ­föreläsning, en mycket noggrann ­berättelse om judisk identitet, en uttömmande berättelse om judisk-amerikansk identitet, ett debattinlägg om sionismen, en historie­lektion. Det är en upprörande, frustrerande och pretentiös bok -- och samtidigt en fängslande, förtjusande, häpnadsväckande och hysteriskt rolig sådan -- det är den bästa och mest relevanta roman jag läst på jag vet inte hur länge." Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times

When his rabbi calls him after Yom Kippur, private eye Benjamin Gold thinks it's just to yell at him for skipping services--but it's even worse than that. It turns out that Benny missed more than some prayers and a sermon: While everyone else was atoning for their sins, a fight broke out in synagogue when a visitor accused one of the leading members of the congregation of being a Nazi collaborator. Is Mendel Kahn the upstanding benefactor of Cleveland's Jewish community he seems to be? Is his real-estate fortune the product of ten years of hard work and good luck, or does his success have a more sinister origin? Is he even Mendel Kahn--or is he really Yitzhak Fried, who exploited and tortured his fellow Jews during the War? As Gold digs into Kahn's dark story, he learns that the man's present is bad enough: he's a slumlord, a gangster, and a sadist. He also doesn't appreciate being investigated...and he has some large and dangerous friends. Can Benjamin Gold survive long enough to uncover the real story of Mendel Kahn's past?

British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945–79 explores the extent to which the Holocaust has shaped British antifascism. The author tests assertions of an uncomplicated relationship between Holocaust memory and the imperative to resist postwar fascist revivals. For those with a scholarly interest in how antifascists confront their opponents, it is essential to understand whether the Holocaust has always been seen as an insurmountable barrier against fascism: is the idea of the genocide’s constant antifascist ‘use’ actually a dangerous assumption and, if so, what are the implications of this for ‘Antifa’ as its battle with the contemporary far right unfolds? This book provides a political and structural history of the Holocaust’s relationship to antifascist organisations and questions whether networks of solidarity formed around Holocaust memory, including analysing the impact of the genocide in Jewish antifascists’ motivations and rhetoric. It also assesses the Holocaust’s political capital in wider antifascism and connected anti-racism, including in defence of the Black and Asian communities increasingly victimised by fascists over the postwar period. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in antifascism, fascism, racism, and Jewish and left-wing history in Britain, and how these intersect with Holocaust consciousness.

Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics—“An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family” that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

A collection of illuminating observations on life and art, from an acclaimed Swiss modernist “[Tess Lewis’s] translation is worthy of her willfully demanding subject, leaping between what Hohl calls the ‘incandescence’ of the aphorism and, in his dream narratives and miniature fairy tales, a shadowy beauty reminiscent of his better-known compatriot Robert Walser.”—Max Norman, Wall Street Journal “The Notes should be celebrated: it is wonderful that this volume of [Hohl’s] compact, aphoristic observations has finally arrived in English.”—Alexandra Sattler, Arts Fuse Revered by Bertolt Brecht and Max Frisch as one of Switzerland’s most commanding writers, Ludwig Hohl spent most of his waking hours with a pen in hand, collecting quotes from others and recording ruminations of his own. Composed between 1934 and 1936 during his residence in the Netherlands in a state of “extreme spiritual desolation,” The Notes is Hohl’s magnum opus: an assemblage of his epiphany-like observations, disparate in subject yet threaded together by a relentless exploration of the nature and origins of creativity. Inspired by Spinoza, Goethe, and many others, The Notes contends with the purpose of work, the vitality of art, and the inevitability of death—a valiant, uncompromising exercise in hope against the devastating backdrop of twentieth-century Europe. This abridged edition, expertly translated by Tess Lewis and with an illuminating foreword by Joshua Cohen, introduces the reader to this remarkable work and its writer.

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2021 A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021 "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 Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian--but not an historian of the Jews--is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.