Zuzovsky

In a glorious debut, a boy confronts queer lust, shame, the threat of war, and the plague of family on the day he becomes a man

At a banquet hall, at the onset of war, Adam Weizmann’s bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood--and the verge of a nervous breakdown--Adam has been bracing for his special day, mired in family neuroses and national dysfunction.

In a chorus of voices, a fractious cast of well-wishers narrates Adam’s coming-of-age in Israel: his newly devout father and the mystic rituals he practiced on his young son; his best friend, Abbie, who points the way to joyful transgression; Khalil, a Palestinian poet, who offers a glimpse of a different way to be; and Adam himself, filled with shame and desire as he faces the brokenness of his world.

At once tender and lustful, a work of scathing satire and piercing insight, Mazeltov is a wholly original vision of a young man’s quest to know his own heart.

Eli Zuzovsky holds degrees from Harvard and Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. In 2022, he was selected for the Forbes Israel 30 Under 30 list and the London Library Emerging Writers Program. His films and plays have been shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the American Repertory Theater, among others. He currently lives in London. Mazeltov is his first novel.