The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua

Once referred to by the New York Times as the Israeli Faulkner, A. B. Yehoshuas fiction invites an assessment of Israels 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 Israels leading novelist.

Instead of an exhaustive chronological-biographical account of Yehoshuas artistic growth, Yael Halevi-Wise calls for a systematic appreciation of the authors major themes and compositional patterns. Specifically, she argues for reading Yehoshuas 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 books seven chapters employs a different interpretive method to showcase how Yehoshuas 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 Yehoshuas masterpiece, Mr. Mani, that interrogates his definition of Jewish identity.

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