A. B. Yehoshua - Literary Career

Literary Career

From the end of his military service, Yehoshua began to publish fiction. His first book of stories, "Mot Hazaken" (The Death of the Old Man) was published in 1962. He became a notable figure in the "new wave" generation of Israeli writers who differed from earlier writers in their focus on the individual and interpersonal rather than the group. Yehoshua names Franz Kafka, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, and William Faulkner as formative influences. Harold Bloom wrote an article about Yehoshua's A Late Divorce in the New York Times and also mentions it in his The Western Canon.

Yehoshua is the author of nine novels (for a complete list see below), three books of short stories, four plays, and four collections of essays, most recently Ahizat Moledet (Homeland Lesson), a book of reflections on identity and literature. His most acclaimed novel, Mr Mani, is a multigenerational look at Jewish identity and Israel through five conversations that go backwards in time to cover over 200 years of Jewish life in Jerusalem and around the Mediterranean basin. It was adapted for television as a five-part multilingual series by director Ram Loevy. As do many of his works,his eighth novel, Friendly Fire, explores the nature of dysfunctional family relationships in a drama that here moves back and forth between Israel and Tanzania. His works have been published in translation in 28 countries, and many have been adapted for film, television, theatre, and opera.