Yehoshua << yeh HOH shoo ah >> , A. B. (1936-2022), was a leading Israeli novelist and short-story writer. He was one of Israel’s best-selling authors, but his works sometimes created controversy because of their critical attitude toward aspects of Israeli society. His novels often have multiple narrators and express different points of view.
Yehoshua wrote in Hebrew. His early works are short stories, many of them symbolic, that reflect the influence of the Israeli author Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Czech writer Franz Kafka, and the American author William Faulkner. Many of these stories were collected in The Continuing Silence of a Poet (1988). The short novel Early in the Summer of 1970 (1970) portrays tensions between native-born and European-born Israelis.
Yehoshua turned to realism with his first full-length novel, The Lover (1977). This book centers on the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel on one side, and Syria and Egypt on the other. Yehoshua’s second novel, A Late Divorce (1982), explores the problems facing an Israeli intellectual who returns to Israel from the United States to get a divorce. Yehoshua’s third novel, Five Seasons (1987), deals with a middle-aged Israeli civil servant and his relations with several women following the death of his wife. Mr. Mani (1990) traces Jewish history from 1848 to 1982 through the experiences of one family. Open Heart (1994) is a love story about a young Israeli doctor in India. A Journey to the End of the Millennium (1997) is a historical novel about a wealthy Jewish merchant’s travels in Europe in the year 999 A.D.
Yehoshua’s later novels include The Liberated Bride (2001) and A Woman in Jerusalem (2004), two complex novels about relationships between Israelis and Arabs. A Woman in Jerusalem tells about a man given the responsibility of identifying and burying a woman killed in a terrorist bombing. Friendly Fire (2007) is a complex novel set in modern Israel and in east Africa that explores issues of Israeli cultural identity. The Retrospective (2011) deals with a 70-year-old Israeli film director who examines his life as he attends a retrospective showing of his motion pictures in Spain. The Extra (2014) is about a woman who returns to Jerusalem and her family after many years. And in The Tunnel (2018), an elderly man seeks purpose in his life even as he is losing his memory.
Yehoshua also wrote a number of plays, such as A Night in May (1969) and Possessions (1986). His dramas generally follow the themes of his fiction. Yehoshua’s political essays were collected in The Wall and the Mountain (1989). His literary essays were published in Terrible Power of a Minor Guilt (1998).
Avraham (also spelled Abraham) Yehoshua was born on Dec. 9, 1936, in Jerusalem. His father’s family had lived in Jerusalem for five generations. His mother was born in north Africa. Yehoshua graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1961 with a B.A. degree. He was dean of students at the University of Haifa from 1967 to 1972. He also lectured at the university and became a professor of literature in 1977. Yehoshua died on June 14, 2022.
