Bad Member, Good Writer

During his time in Israel, Cohen, who is forty-one, learned that his novel, the perhaps inevitable winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, had become the more unexpected recipient of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Though Pulitzer committees do not name a shortlist – or even a date for the winners’ announcement – it seems fair to say that Cohen’s book was not being touted as a frontrunner.