Eli Glasman

Eli Glasman is a Melbourne writer whose debut novel closely examines faith, family expectation, and sexuality. The Boy’s Own Manual to Being a Proper Jew follows Yossi, raised in an Orthodox Jewish community, as he weighs desire against the framework shaping his life. In an Australian Writers’ Centre interview, Glasman discusses gay, Jewish, and Melbourne experience; Goodreads records the debut as Australian teen fiction. That specificity matters: communal practice and personal conflict belong to one identity, not generic obstacles. Glasman treats Yossi’s questions through affection, obligation, uncertainty, and the difficulty of imagining change without losing connection. The Boy’s Own Manual to Being a Proper Jew is both a story of growing up and a close portrait of someone deciding which inherited expectations he can inhabit honestly within his own community.