The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua

Yael Halevi-Wise

Published by Penn State University Press 2020

The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua

Yael Halevi-Wise

Volume 9 in the series Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271088648

Overview
Contents

About this book

Once referred to by the New York Times as the “Israeli Faulkner,” A. B. Yehoshua’s fiction invites an assessment of Israel’s Jewish inheritance and the moral and political options that the country currently faces in the Middle East. The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua is an insightful overview of the fiction, nonfiction, and hundreds of critical responses to the work of Israel’s leading novelist.

Instead of an exhaustive chronological-biographical account of Yehoshua’s artistic growth, Yael Halevi-Wise calls for a systematic appreciation of the author’s major themes and compositional patterns. Specifically, she argues for reading Yehoshua’s novels as reflections on the “condition of Israel,” constructed multifocally to engage four intersecting levels of signification: psychological, sociological, historical, and historiosophic. Each of the book’s seven chapters employs a different interpretive method to showcase how Yehoshua’s constructions of character psychology, social relations, national history, and historiosophic allusions to traditional Jewish symbols manifest themselves across his novels. The book ends with a playful dialogue in the style of Yehoshua’s masterpiece, Mr. Mani, that interrogates his definition of Jewish identity.

Masterfully written, with full control of all the relevant materials, Halevi-Wise’s assessment of Yehoshua will appeal to students and scholars of modern Jewish literature and Jewish studies.

Author / Editor information

Halevi-Wise Yael :

Yael Halevi-Wise is Associate Professor and Chair of Jewish Studies at McGill University. She is the author of Interactive Fictions: Scenes of Storytelling in the Novel and the editor of Sephardism: Spanish Jewish History and the Modern Literary Imagination.

Reviews

“Yael Halevi-Wise’s book on A. B. Yehoshua is a useful, intelligent introduction to the fiction of arguably the most talented Israeli novelist.”
—Dan Miron, author of From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

“The work of A. B. Yehoshua—one of Israel's most important writers since the 1960s—has long merited a full, book-length study in English. Yael Halevi-Wise's book has the virtue of broad scope, including commentary on a range of works from Yehoshua’s earliest writing up to his latest novel, from 2018. It offers an overview of his multilayered narrative techniques as well as chapters on a variety of themes and signature moves in his oeuvre.”
—Naomi Sokoloff, coeditor of What We Talk about When We Talk about Hebrew (And What It Means to Americans)

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Maps Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
Note on Translation and Transliteration Publicly Available Download PDF	xix
1 Condition-of-Israel Novels Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Mapping A. B. Yehoshua’s Worldview Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
3 The Watchman’s Stance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
4 Vocation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
5 Holidays Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
6 Names Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
7 Love Under the Burden of History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Coda: A Telephone Conversation with the Author of Mr. Mani Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 226
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 10
- Other: 10 maps
Keywords: A. B. Yehoshua; Israeli literature; Modern Hebrew literature

eBook

Published: December 22, 2020
ISBN: 9780271088648