MAZELTOV

At a banquet hall in Israel, at the height of a war, Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood - and on the verge of a nervous breakdown - Adam takes a crucial step toward coming to terms with his sexuality.

MAZELTOV ponders what it means to become a stranger in your own land: to come of age as a closeted gay boy in Israel against a landscape of nationalism, bigotry, and heteronormativity. The novel shatters conventions of time, place, genre, and narrative perspective, exploring the inner lives of an entire cast of outsiders. These include Adam's Catholic grandmother, who was forced to convert to Judaism but remains an alienated soul in the country she has made her home; his religiously zealous father, mysteriously absent from the celebration; and a queer Palestinian waiter, whose brief encounter with the bar mitzvah boy will change both of their lives.

Through its polyphony of misfits, MAZELTOV challenges common notions of coming-of-age as a single-day transformation that shapes the individual - instead investigating it as an ongoing process involving an entire community.

ELI ZUZOVSKY holds degrees from Harvard and Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. In 2022, he was selected for the Israeli 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.