"And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so." -- A. B. Yehoshua
Abraham B. ("Bulli") Yehoshua () (born December 19, 1936) is an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright. His pen name is A. B. Yehoshua.
"I don't think that when Zionism began there was a claim that we were losing - even in part - our capacity to contribute to other peoples.""Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.""One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more.""So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.""The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.""The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn't permit them to cross boundaries with other people.""The weapon of suicide bombing is so desperate that you aren't even left with the possibility of taking revenge or punishing anyone; the terrorist is killed along with his victims, his blood mixing with theirs.""Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.""We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?""We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory."
A.B. Yehoshua was born to a fifth-generation Jerusalem family of Sephardi origin. His father, Yaakov Yehoshua, was a scholar and author specializing in the history of Jerusalem. His mother, Malka Rosilio, immigrated from Morocco in 1932. Yehoshua served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army from 1954 to 1957. He attended Gymnasia Rehavia. After studying literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he began teaching. He lived in Jerusalem's Neve Sha'anan neighborhood. From 1963 to 1967 Yehoshua lived and taught in Paris and served as the General Secretary of the World Union of Jewish Students. Since 1972, he has taught Comparative and Hebrew Literature at the University of Haifa, where he holds the rank of Full Professor. In 1975 he was a writer-in-residence at St. Cross College, Oxford. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard (1977) the University of Chicago (1988, 1997, 2000) and Princeton (1992).
Yehoshua is married to Rivka, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. They have a daughter and two sons, and six grandchildren.
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 compared Yehoshua to Faulkner in an article in the New York Times and also mentions him in his book 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 over the span of a century. It was adopted for television as a five-part series by director Ram Loevy. His most recent novel, Friendly Fire, explores the nature of Israeli familial relationships. In a drama that moves back and forth between Israel and Tanzania, Yehoshua explores personal grief and bitterness.His works have been published in translation in 28 countries, and many have been adapted for film, television, theatre, and opera.
In 1983, A.B. Yehoshua was awarded the Brenner Prize.
In 1986, he received the Alterman Prize.
In 1989, he was a co-recipient (jointly with Avner Treinin) of the Bialik Prize for literature.
In 1995, he was awarded the Israel Prize for Hebrew literature .
He has also won the National Jewish Book Award and the Koret Jewish Book Award in the U.S., as well as the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize in the United Kingdom.
Yehoshua was shortlisted in 2005 for the first Man Booker International Prize.
In 2006, "A Woman in Jerusalem" was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
In Italy, he has received the Grinzane Cavour Award, the Flaiano Superprize, the Giovanni Boccaccio Prize, and the Viareggio Prize for Lifetime Achievement. In 2003, his novel "The Liberated Bride" won both the Premio Napoli and the Lampedusa Literary Prize. "Friendly Fire" won the Premio Roma in 2008.
He has received honorary doctorates from Hebrew Union College (1990), Tel Aviv University (1998), Torino University (1999), and Bar-Ilan University (2000).
An ardent, untiring activist in the Israeli Peace Movement, Yehoshua attended the signing of the Geneva Accord and freely airs his political views in essays and interviews. He is a long-standing critic of Israeli occupation but also of the Palestinians.
He and some other intellectuals mobilized on behalf of the dovish New Movement shortly before 2009 elections in Israel.
Yehoshua said in La Stampa that he first related that even before the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict began, he had published an appeal to Gaza residents urging them to end the violence. Next he explained, "why the Israeli operation was necessary, but also how quickly it needs to end." Precisely because the Gazans are our neighbors, he said, "we need to be proportionate in this operation. We need to try to reach a cease-fire as quickly as possible." "We will always be neighbors, so the less blood is shed, the better the future will be," he added. Yehoshua added that he would be happy for the border crossings to be opened completely, and even for Palestinian workers to come to work in Israel as part of a cease-fire.
Yehoshua has been criticized by the American Jewish community for his statement that a "full Jewish life could only be had in the Jewish state." He claimed that Jews elsewhere were only "playing with Judaism."
"....[Diaspora Jews] change [their] nationalities like jackets. Once they were Polish and Russian; now they are British and American. One day they could choose to be Chinese or Singaporean...For me, Avraham Yehoshua, there is no alternative... I cannot keep my identity outside Israel. [Being] Israeli is my skin, not my jacket.
"The Palestinians are in a situation of insanity reminiscent of the insanity of the German people in the Nazi period. The Palestinians are not the first people that the Jewish people has driven insane."
Subsequent clarification by Yehoshua:"I ask myself a question that must be asked: What brought the Germans and what is bringing the Palestinians to such hatred of us? We have a tough history. We came here out of a Jewish experience, and the settlements are messing it up."A. B. Yehoshua at an academic conference, Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2002http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1023716529742
"Diaspora Judaism is masturbation," Yehoshua told editors and reporters at The Jerusalem Post. "Here," meaning, in Israel, he said, "it is the real thing."
"[W]e are not bent on killing Palestinian children to avenge the killing of our children. All we are trying to do is get their leaders to stop this senseless and wicked aggression, and it is only because of the tragic and deliberate mingling between Hamas fighters and the civilian population that children, too, are unfortunately being killed. The fact is that since the disengagement, Hamas has fired only at civilians. Even in this war, to my astonishment, I see that they are not aiming at the army concentrations along the border but time and again at civilian communities."
The Lover [Ha-Me'ahev, 1977]. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday, 1978 (translated by Philip Simpson). Dutton, 1985. Harvest/HBJ, 1993. ISBN 0156539128
A Late Divorce [Gerushim Meuharim, 1982]. London, Harvill Press, 1984. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday, 1984. London, Sphere/Abacus Books, 1985. New York, Dutton, 1985. San Diego, Harcourt Brace, 1993. ISBN 0156494477
Five Seasons [Molcho, 1987]. New York, Doubleday, 1989. New York, Dutton Obelisk, 1989. London, Collins, 1989. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1990. London, Fontana, 1990. ISBN 1870015940
Mr. Mani [Mar Manni, 1990]. New York, Doubleday, 1992. London, Collins, 1992. London, Peter Halban, 1993. San Diego, Harvest/HBJ, 1993. London, Phoenix/Orion Books, 1994. ISBN 1857991850
Open Heart [Ha-Shiv`a Me-Hodu (The Return from India), 1994]. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday, 1995. London, Peter Halban, 1996. San Diego, Harvest/HBJ, 1997. ISBN 0156004844
A Journey to the End of the Millennium [Masah El Tom Ha-Elef, 1997]. New York, Doubleday & Co., 1999. London, Peter Halban, 1999. ISBN 0156011166
The Liberated Bride [Ha-Kala Ha-Meshachreret, 2001]. London, Peter Halban, 2004. ISBN 0156030160
A Woman in Jerusalem [Shlihuto Shel Ha-memouneh Al Mashabei Enosh (The Human Resources Supervisor's Mission), 2004]. London, Halban Publishers, 2006. ISBN 1870015983. New York, Harcourt, 2006. ISBN 0151012261
Friendly Fire: A Duet [Esh Yedidutit,2007] London, Halban Publishers, 2008, ISBN 978-1905559084. New York, Harcourt 2008, ISBN 978-0151014194
Short Stories
Early in the Summer of 1970 [Bi-Thilat Kayitz, 1970, 1972]. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday, 1977. London, Heinemann, 1980. New York, Berkley Publishing, 1981. London, Fontana Paperbacks, 1990. ISBN 0385025904
Three Days and a Child [Shlosha Yamim Ve-Yeled, 1975]. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday, 1970. London, Peter Owen, 1971. ISBN 0720601614
The Continuing Silence of a Poet. London, Peter Halban, 1988. London, Fontana Paperbacks, 1990. London, New York, Penguin, 1991. Syracuse, N.Y., Syracuse University Press, 1998. ISBN 0815605595
Essays
Israel. London, Collins, 1988. New York, Harper & Row, 1988. Jerusalem, Steimatzky/Collins Harvill, 1988.
Between Right and Right [Bein Zechut Le-Zechut, 1980]. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday, 1981. ISBN 0385170351
The Terrible Power of a Minor Guilt [Kocha Ha-Nora Shel Ashma Ktana, 1998]. New York, Syracuse University Press, 2000. ISBN 0815606567
"An Attempt to Identify the Root Cause of Antisemitism", Azure (Spring 2008).
Plays
A Night in May [Layla Be-May, 1975]. Tel Aviv, Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, 1974.
Facing the Fires: Conversations with A. B. Yehoshua By: Bernard Horn. (Syracuse: University of Syracuse Press, 1998).
Journal articles
Gershon Shaked Interviews A. B. Yehoshua By: Shaked, Gershon; Modern Hebrew Literature, 2006 Fall; 3: 157-69.
A Haifa Life: The Israeli Novelist Talks about Ducking into His Safe Room, Competition among His Writer Friends and Trying to Stay Optimistic about Peace in the Middle East By: Solomon, Deborah; New York Times Magazine, 30 July 2006; 13.
In the Back Yard of Agnon's House: Between The Liberated Bride by A. B. Yehoshua and S. Y. Agnon By: Ben-Dov, Nitza; Hebrew Studies: A Journal Devoted to Hebrew Language and Literature, 2006; 47: 237-51.
Semantic Parameters of Vision Words in Hebrew and English By: Myhill, John; Languages in Contrast: International Journal for Contrastive Linguistics, 2006; 6 (2): 229-60.
Talking with A. B. Yehoshua By: Naves, Elaine Kalman; Queen's Quarterly, 2005 Spring; 112 (1): 76-86.
The Silence of the Historian and the Ingenuity of the Storyteller: Rabbi Amnon of Mayence and Esther Minna of Worms By: Yuval, Israel Jacob; Common Knowledge, 2003 Spring; 9 (2): 228-40.
The Plot of Suicide in A. B. Yehoshua and Leo Tolstoy By: Horn, Bernard; European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms, 2001 Oct; 6 (5): 633-38.
The Originary Scene, Sacrifice, and the Politics of Normalization in A. B. Yehoshua's Mr. Mani By: Katz, Adam; Anthropoetics: The Electronic Journal of Generative Anthropology, 2001 Fall-2002 Winter; 7 (2): 9 paragraphs.
Borderline Cases: National Identity and Territorial Affinity in A. B. Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani By: Morahg, Gilead; AJS Review 30:1, 2006: 167-182.
The Perils of Hybridity: Resisting the Post-Colonial Perspective in A. B. Yehoshua's The Liberating Bride By: Morahg, Gilead; AJS Review 33:2, 2009: 363-378.
Portrait of the Artist as an Aging Scholar: A. B. Yehoshua’s The Liberating Bride By: Morahg, Gilead; Hebrew Studies 50, 2009: 175-183.
Totem and blindness in Israel 2001: Cultural selection procedures presented in A.B. Yehoshua's novel 'The Liberating Bride' by: Albeck-Gidron, Rachel, Mikan 2005 jan; 4: 5-19.
Book articles
Not Quite Holocaust Fiction: A. B. Yehoshua's Mr. Mani and W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants By: Newton, Adam Zachary. IN: Hirsch and Kacandes, Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America; 2004. pp. 422—30
Shading the Truth: A. B. Yehoshua's 'Facing the Forests' By: Morahg, Gilead. IN: Cutter and Jacobson, History and Literature: New Readings of Jewish Texts in Honor of Arnold J. Band. Providence, RI: Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University; 2002. pp. 409—18
Between Genesis and Sophocles: Biblical Psychopolitics in A. B. Yehoshua's Mr. Mani By: Feldman, Yael S.. IN: Cutter and Jacobson, History and Literature: New Readings of Jewish Texts in Honor of Arnold J. Band. Providence, RI: Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University; 2002. pp. 451—64
