At SF Signal, John H. Stevens has a thorough two-part look at Lavie Tidhar's Osama, starting with the novel itself and then looking at it in the context of other alternate-reality novels by Joanna Russ and Philip K. Dick:

Through these fashionings of agency the three novels are written to unnerve the reader. For Dick, the changed history of the characters’ world less than a generation after the end of World War II is meant to be shocking, with the discovery of this other reality functioning as an admonishment to them and perhaps to the reader too. The casual racism of some of the characters accentuates this shock. Russ relies on some radical behavior in her characters as well, who respond to worlds that seem too stark and simplistic, but that when combined create an unsettling, evocative arena for debating sexual and gender politics. Tidhar’s Joe, in contrast, is a very driven blank-slate, someone who goes out of his way to discover “the truth” but in the end relinquishes it. In each case, the author wants to throw the reader off-balance to make them ponder how ideology, cultural assumptions, and casual acceptance of the reality-story around you can imprison you.