Eli Zuzovsky is a writer/director who has been awarded the Israeli Academy Award and has been selected for the Israeli Forbes list of “30 Under 30,” the Séries Mania Writers Campus, and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. His debut novel Maveltov, which was a Debutiful Most Anticipated Debut Book of 2025, is a polyphonic story about a young boy’s bar mitzvah and the swirling expectations of what it means to become a man at the young age of thirteen.
Zuzkovsky and I chatted via Zoom about art and what drives him. Below is a lightly edited and condensed version of that conversation.
Debutiful: What is Mazeltov from your perspective?
Eli Zuzovsky: You know with the publicity stuff, they like to go with the coming-of-age label, which I’m interested in exploring to some extent, but I really think of it more as a polyphonic novel in the sense that I’m really invested in exploring different perspectives and points of view. I like to see how they all how they’re all interconnected.
Debutiful: I think part of how I have to think about books is following publicity copy because I just want people to read books and I know people love coming-of-age books.
Zuzovsky: Not to mention queer, right?
Debutiful: Yes, a queer coming-of-age is easier to sell.
Zuzovsky: Which again, I’m not opposed to at all.
Debutiful: I think one thing that interests me writers is they go from an artform in writing to a business in being an author. And one thing I find fascinating about you in general is Art with a capital A. You’ve worked in film, theatre, and writing. A simple but maybe difficult to answer question is: why? Why do it?
Zuzovsky: That’s a question I ask myself every day. I honestly just don’t know another way of being in the world, you know? I’ve been doing since ever since I can remember. So even as a kid, I sort of had this secret plan with my grandmother, who I was very close with, and she took me to audition for this big art school in my hometown in Tel Aviv, which I ended up going to against my parents’ wishes. It was this kind of place where you have to do everything in your early years. I had to do ballet, I played the saxophone, we made short films with my friends, and I was always a writer.
It’s a little bit in my DNA. I don’t remember myself without all these different media. I’ve come to appreciate the cross-pollination that comes from working across media. For instance, this book started as my senior thesis in undergrad, and because I was a double major, I also turned it into a short film. It’s been interesting because people have described the book as cinematic without knowing it was also a short film, which to me is fascinating. It makes me very happy because I do think of it in this way. It also happens when people watch the film and they say, oh, it’s such a theatrical film, which I’m sure is related to the fact that I’ve worked extensively in theater.
Debutiful: In doing all of those mediums, what do you what do you consider yourself first? What form of artist are you primarily?
Zuzovsky: I think of myself as a writer/director. I feel like in my case, the two balance each other. Writing is so solitary and tou’re on your own. There’s part of me that loves that and that is energized by that. But after I spend a month or whatever just writing without doing any kind of directing or collaborating with others, I get antsy. I get something in me that is sort of restless. Then I find myself in a rehearsal room with actors and then I miss the solitude of of being on my own and the quiet of my desk. I feel like to be able to keep generating work, I need both.
Debutiful: When you’re in writer mode or director mode, do you ever find yourself stuck and wishing you were in the other mode?
Zuzovsky: Totally, and honestly with the case in this case of Mazeltov, I could see how the book benefited from the film, and vice versa. I had started writing the book when we went into production with the film, but I don’t think I made it very far in. I had an opportunity to have actual conversations with my characters via the wonderful actors who played them. I was working with on set, and some of them were really cheeky. The child actors would say things like, no, I would never say something like this. They know better. They know better. They’re 12 and I felt like the feedback I got from them ended up informing the book and how I thought about the characters and their voices. So. So that was wonderful.
Debutiful: During the filming,why did you decide I’m going to turn this into prose?
Zuzovsky: They were kind of born as fraternal twins in the sense that I was majoring in both, and my departments told me I had to craft a project with both in conversation.
Debutiful: As a creator who focuses in different areas of art, what are influences across film, media, and music?
Zuzovsky: There are so many, and a lot of them are actually in the book. I think in some ways it is a book about art and writing and the different ways in which we shape one another. If someone reads the book, maybe they’ll pick up on the Virginia Woolf references and the whole chapter that is written from the perspective of Adam’s mom, who is a literary scholar who has spent so much time in the company of Virginia Woolf that has her own consciousness is sort of melted into Mrs. Dalloway.
That’s one example that is in the book itself. But I would say more broadly I’m really into modernism. Also, I was reading a lot of Proust when I was writing this book. Katherine Mansfield is another influence and I would say the biggest one is probably James Joyce.
We had to read Ulysses during my first winter break when I moved to the U.S. to do my undergrad in 2017. Then, I went on to read a lot of other books by Joyce, and I think I have a pretty unhealthy relationship with him, actually. I mean, that Ulysses, completely transformed the way I think about literature and what it can do. I feel like there’s a part of me that understands Joyce because of his ambivalent or fraught relationship with Ireland at large and Dublin in particular. Writing about places from afar has been a huge part of my work in life.
Debutiful: I am always fascinated with place. What do you think of place? What do you think of place?
Zuzovsky: What do I think of place? Place with a capital P.
Debutiful: Yeah, and I know it’s a very broad question so take it however you want to take it.
Zuzovsky: I have a fraught relationship with this notion because on the one hand, I find it very generative, and no one told me to write a book that takes place mostly in Israel. I could have written on any other number of places I had been to. But I was propelled to write on Israel for a reason. I think it can be very useful to be grounded in a specific location, and to think about the different kinds of people who inhabit that location. I was thinking back to my childhood, to the people I grew up with, my family, friends, and strangers I met. So, that’s useful in some ways. In other ways, I think place can be really limiting and even haunting.
I was born in Israel. I grew up in Israel. In many ways, I feel Israeli, but I don’t know that that’s the first term I would use to describe myself or my writing. I don’t know if I have an Israeli sensibility, whatever that means. I guess in this sense, place can be tricky because it can be very limiting. I sometimes feel haunted by it.
Debutiful: Where do you want to take your art? Where do you see yourself doing next? Or why do you want to do that?
Zuzovsky: I think because of the interdisciplinary nature of my work, I kind of have to work on a few things at all times. I’ve been writing a TV show for a long time now. I’m working on my first feature-length film. I’m writing another novel, and you sort of have to keep doing all of them and wait to see which one takes shape in the world. I would love to just keep juggling writing, directing, film, theater, and literature.
I hope that our culture is going in that direction where people feel empowered to work across media, and write a film, then work on a book. I think it’s always been the case, but lot of people in the industry are reluctant to admit that people have been doing this for ages. As you said, there’s this tendency to sort of label us and put us in boxes. I’ve spent quite a long time with Mazeltov, and I’m ready to move on to other fictional worlds.