A short life of the author
Avraham B. Yehoshua (1936–2022) was born on 9 December 1936 in Jerusalem. He studied Hebrew literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He taught at the University of Haifa for over thirty years and was one of Israel’s most prominent public intellectuals.
Life and Career
Yehoshua’s early stories and novellas — particularly “Facing the Forests” (1963) and The Lover (HaMe’ahev, 1977) — established him as a leading figure in Israeli literature alongside Amos Oz and David Grossman.
A Late Divorce (1982) — told through multiple voices over a Passover week — and Mr. Mani (1990) — five conversations spanning six generations of a Sephardic Jewish family, told in reverse chronological order — are his most formally ambitious works. Mr. Mani is a remarkable structural achievement in which only one side of each conversation is given, requiring the reader to infer the other.
A Woman in Jerusalem (2004) — about the search for the identity of a foreign worker killed in a bombing — won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Major Works and Themes
Yehoshua wrote about Israeli identity, the Sephardic-Ashkenazi divide, the relationship between Jews and Arabs, and the psychological costs of living in a state of permanent conflict. His formal experimentation — polyphonic narration, reverse chronology, one-sided dialogue — is always in service of his thematic concerns.
Key Works
- The Lover (1977)
- A Late Divorce (1982)
- Mr. Mani (1990)
Collecting Yehoshua
Hebrew originals (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Keter) are the primary collected form. English translations (Doubleday, Harcourt) bring $15–$40. Yehoshua died in 2022.