A. B. Yehoshua

Yehoshuahas listed Franz Kafka, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, and William Faulkner as hismain literary influences, and the New York Times has even called him “akind of Israeli Faulkner.”  His earliest works were compared to Kafkafor their use of suspense and allegory.

Throughout his career, Yehoshua has focused much of his attention onthe Israelis and the Israeli state.  The Minnesota Daily wrote, “He isto Israel what Garcia Marquez is to Colombia, Grass is to Germany andRushdie is to India – a kind of literary spokesman for the entirecountry.”  By the 1970s, Yehoshua’s writing became decidedly morerealistic, beginning with his book The Lover (1977), which focuses onan Israeli man’s search for his wife’s lover in the aftermath of theYom Kippur War.  Perhaps Yehoshua’s best-known book is Mr. Mani (1990),“a time-machine that transports the reader through Jerusalem’s history,the history of the Sephardim, and the history of Zionism itself” (TheBoston Review).

Yehoshua’s novels, including Five Seasons (1987), Journey to the Endof the Millennium (1999), The Liberated Bride (2001), and The Missionof the Human-Resource Man (2004), are notable for their unique literarystyle, which has been termed “anti-stream of consciousness.”  Forexample, his Mr. Mani is told in the form of five long conversations,held over a 150 year period, in which the reader can only hear one sideof the dialogue at a time.  The Lover, on the other hand, employs themulti-voice narrative technique made famous by Faulkner in As I LayDying.  The Village Voice has said, “Yehoshua’s stories find their wayright into the unconscious… Nobel prizes have been given for less.”

Yehoshua’s works have been awarded the Bialik Prize, the BrennerPrize, the Alterman Prize, and the Israeli Prize, the most prestigiousaward given by the state of Israel.  Yehoshua currently lives with hiswife, a psychoanalyst, in Haifa, where he serves as the senior lecturerof literature at the University of Haifa.