A defiant, funny and deeply Jewish novel

The Very Annoying Jew is a newly released comic satire that takes aim at contemporary Jewish life, identity and cultural tensions.

Written by filmmaker and producer Michael Kretzmer, the novel blends sharp social observation with dark humour, offering readers a timely, and deliberately provocative, take on the pressures facing Jews in public and cultural life today.

Kretzmer, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker perhaps best known in Australian circles for his Holocaust-themed documentary J’Accuse!, brings his cinematic eye to the page. The Very Annoying Jew doesn’t just poke fun at its titular protagonist David Britton, it confronts the reader with the absurdities and anxieties of our times.

Britton is an unlikeable yet watchable central character. A successful TV producer whose personal and professional worlds are collapsing, he is “a dishevelled, dissolute, privileged boomer with a public school education” who seems to have offended everyone, including his wife, colleagues, strangers and even his own staff.

His misfortunes, as Kretzmer slyly points out, are largely deserved.