David Herman
A.B. Yehoshua and the Generation of the State

David Herman - A.B. Yehoshua and the Generation of the State

- Hello, I’m David Herman in London and today is the first of three talks I’m going to be giving about great Israeli writers, A.B. Yehoshua today, Aharon Applefelt next week and in two weeks time Amoz Moss. All three were born in the 1930s and in many ways it’s hard to imagine three more different writers in terms of their background, in terms of their writing. Yehoshua was the only one who was born in Israel of Israeli parents. was born in Israel in Jerusalem, but of European parents, and Aaron Applefelt was born in Bovina in East Europe and came to Israel as a very young man. So I’m going to start with A.B. Yehoshua. He was born in 1936 on December the 19th, and he was born in British control Jerusalem in the fifth generation of a Safardi Jewish family. So he went way back in terms of his roots in Israel and Palestine. His father, Yaakov Yehoshua, a fourth generation Jerusalemite, worked as a translator for the mandatory government of Britain. He spoke and wrote Arabic fluently, writing 12 books in that language. A.B.‘s mother, Malka was one of 11 children born in Morocco. She was brought to pre-state Israel by her widowed father in 1932 and was quickly and rather unhappily married to Yakob. A.B. was educated at the Gymnasium Rehavia, a secular school in Jerusalem and went on to serve in the Airborne Battalion of the Nahal Brigade with which he saw action in the 1956 Suez War. He published his first short stories in 1957, and he was part of a literary student circle. And he wrote later that very same year, I remember Aaron Applefelt reading his stories, “Smoke and Berta”, Amos Moss showed me his first story a year or two after this and in we discovered a nice story by someone called Abby O'Neill.

When I asked the editor Aaron Amir, who the man was, he told me about a fellow called Yehoshua Canaz who was living in Paris from where he’d sent this story. He considered himself part of something called “the generation of the state”, and he wrote, and I’m extremely fond of this term and happy to include myself in it, “the generation of the state” he wrote, “helped first by poetry and then through prose drama and perhaps also in the cinema to consolidate and mould Israeli destiny. A clear distinction between two adjacent generations that which preceded us, which is the generation of the War of Independence” he wrote, “and the two generations which succeeded us, whose function and aim was also to distinguish themselves from us and perhaps even to pit themselves against us the better to define themselves just as we wish to distinguish ourselves from the generation of the war of independence. I’m referring to the 1980s and 90s generation about part of whose characteristics we’ve read in the excellent book by Gati Tao, "The Dejected Revolution”. “We are the generation” Yehosua wrote, “which internalised very clearly the transition from Eretz Israel to Israel. And this had great significance since through this we acquired a grasp of frontiers and the security that comes from understanding frontiers.” And frontiers are a hugely important theme and subject in Yehosua’s writing. The fact is he wrote, “that we were the sons of an outstanding generation, one could almost say unique in the history of the Jewish people in the past 2000 years, and that we grew to maturity, having a clear understanding of the state’s physical frontiers and what was within the bounds of its jurisdiction and responsibility and what was not.

This fact helped us tremendously in crystallising our identity as a separate generation”, and this is very important for understanding Yehosua and for understanding his generation of writers that they thought of themselves very much as a separate distinct generation of Israeli writers. One of the clearest examples of the ability to apply a literary treatment to these frontiers he wrote, “was in my opinion, the ability to deal with the persona of the Israeli Arab. I recall for example, how when I was still a youth at the start of the 1950s visiting a village in Galilee who with my father who was in those days the director of the department for Muslim Andrus Affairs at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, I then understood very well the sense of belonging to a framework that linked these Arabs to us and our responsibility towards them, and this sense permitted me some 20 years later to try to enter into the soul of Arab characters such as Naim in the lover. And to place them naturally within the framework of the novel and the short story. Despite all their differences, national and religious, and despite their enmity and their indignation, they were part of us.” he wrote “and it was the clear territorial frontiers which determined their place within Israeli identity. These frontiers” he wrote, “gave the individual security and one of the things which distinguishes our generation is additional freedom from the ties and affinities to the collective, as if the clear territorial frontiers also strengthened and consolidated the frontiers of the individual.

On the one hand, again, relatively the events of those years were not so stormy and dangerous as to force one to experience them incessantly through the collective in which there is a real stream of collective consciousness. On the other hand, this solitary hero was able to depart far more from the norm without endangering himself or the framework in which he operated. For us, the state was an established fact which you do not find in or or at certain stages, and not in Professor Liebowitz, the noted philosopher who never sees speaking of the state as an instrument of power. We had a positive attitude, but also a realistic one towards the experience of statehood without the romanticism of the previous generation, the generation of the war of independence. We did not pin too many hopes on the state because it was not us that gave birth to her and therefore neither could we be too disappointed. At the same time, there was our ability to criticise the experience of statehood without feeling that our criticism might cause it to collapse. Amos Oz’s criticisms of the kibbutz for instance, were interior humanist much more than Zionist ideological. I was able to write a surrealistic story called 'The Last Commander’ about a group of army reservists who spend their service time in a kind of idle stupor, but this was on the basis of deep belief, not just that the war of independence was fully justified, and that is my belief to this day, but that in fact the state had finished with wars and that we could sink into a passive sleep instead of dashing to the hilltops.

Thus we were free to a certain degree from the intensity of the focus on the intimate collective, but also from the need to accomplish everything which preceded us. It was a loneliness by comparison to some kind of prior and strong collectivism which cast a strong light in the 1940s, but we related to this collectivism with respect, even if we cut loose from it. The concept of responsibility did not leave us. This uniqueness balanced the political and ideological forces that were prevalent in the 1950s and the start of the 60s, but with the six day war and regarding the weighty ideological and political issues which had stirred up, our generation, most of whom had already had more than a decade of creative writing behind them could digest this renewal of political ideology within literary personas that were already shaped. From this point of view, we did not spring up, as did the generation which proceeded us bearing the full weight of ideological questions. Neither did we come as with the generation which succeeded us who were born into a political reality of conquest, a burning reality constantly in the headlines. The political ideological dimension at some point breathe new life into writing without prematurely tiring it out because there still remained a strong basis of solidarity.

The transition he wrote from Yehosua’s Israelis to Israeliness eliminated the romantic Canaanite option, which to some extent had ever best in the previous generations. The huge waves of immigration which engulfed the country, even if they were beyond our literary abilities, proved clearly and decisively that neither we nor our fathers were born of the sea, nor from the fields of Phillistia and the behind these assumed accents of Jonathan Ratosh and Aaron Amir stood their Jewish forebears from Eastern Europe who when it came down to it were no different from those who came from Morocco or from Libya. Then there was the attitude to religion and the religious.” he wrote. “In the 1950s and 60s, the vacuum around us was not charged with the same intense animosity to religion and to religious people that we find in our generation and the generations which followed us. On the other hand, there has never been quite the same complete dissociation from religious elements as there was in the writing of the generation of the war of independence. This allowed many of us to integrate in a limited but tangible way the elements which are so very central both to our people and to our culture in a way that enriched our writing. I as a person, both secular and agnostic”, he wrote, “did not find it a problem to enter into the souls and spiritual world of rabbis and religious Jews, and to present them in a legitimate way at the forefront of the story without immediately running into the weary conflict for or against religion. Nevertheless, in our period there was the approach which was revealed later as hasty and mistaken that secular nationalism had won a decisive victory over the religious and religion and it was therefore permissible to include some of the more outlandish religious aspects so as to enrich the kneading of the dough of fiction.

In any case, in the 1950s and 60s, we viewed the religious as a sinking and disappearing world and therefore less threatening. Then there’s what he called our sense of continuity to Hebrew literature. This sense of course was also that of the generation of the war of independence. However, in contrast to that generation, many of us also studied in the faculty of Hebrew literature in Jerusalem, and researched it in a systematic and organised fashion. The sense of continuity and commitment to Hebrew literature of our generation has permitted a more integrated attitude of the Jewish paths. I stress the point” he wrote, “since I have a clear impression that in the generation of the 1990s, in particular, there’s been an almost complete cessation of the dialogue with the dynasties of Hebrew literature. And it might be that this is connected to the political nausea of writers far to the north of Judaism and Jewishness. In any case, it is clear to me that without such a dialogue with the past, it is difficult to give stability to literary writing. In the final analysis, what is Agnan without Mandela or even without Brennan? What is Yatsal without ? What is Oz without ? Or what are Applefelt or myself without Agnan?

The most important of all, at least to me and to some of my colleagues is that point that gave the writing of the generation of the state a kind of special vitality that gave it such a conspicuous and central place in the last 50 years and among all the literary generations to the point that even critics who love to make incessant changes to the literary map are still required to move and change around. What made this generation of the state so dominant in Israeli literature, not only from a pure literary standpoint, from the stance of literary research, but also in the rich interrelationship with the readers. I think that right from the beginning, we had some kind of interesting balance that between the revealed and the hidden, which is something which becomes very important in Yehosua’s writing. I’m talking about hidden false bottomed compartments that were within us, drawers that were opened in the course of our creativity and because of which the writings of Agnan became the source of such multi-layered inspiration for us, because Agnan is the supreme artist of folding and hidden away drawers. The generation before us was open in its writing.” he wrote, “You read entire pages by Yetsal or and you do not have to search for what is buried behind these pages.

They’re open with all their strength and importance, they present reality with straightforwardness and force and they believe in it. With our generation, the concealed drawers were buried, which we might not even have known at the outset, but due to these hidden drawers, reality became dual faced as if saving one thing and yet another thing that at the beginning was not even clear to ourselves. Usually these were autobiographical draws that were concealed for various reasons and which were gradually disclosed.” In 1961, Yehosua was awarded a BA in literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and from the end of his military service he began to publish fiction. He first came to critical attention with short story collections published in the 60s. He became a notable figure in the new wave generation of Israeli writers. They contrasted with the social concern of earlier writers by focusing on the individual and the interpersonal. Yehosua names Kafka, Agnan and William Faulkner as formative influences. One of the most acclaimed and translated living Hebrew novelists, Yehosua became known for his beautifully observed portrayals of Jewish life, particularly in contemporary Israel with its many moral, psychological, sociopolitical and philosophical conflicts. He taught in Paris for four years during the 60s, and then he moved to Haifa in 1967. He published his first novel early in the summer of 1970, in 1970. And in 1972 joined the faculty of the University of Haifa. In 2004 he published one of his most acclaimed novels, “A Woman in Jerusalem”. It begins with a body, “A young woman has been killed by a suicide bomb in Jerusalem.

A payslip links her to a company and a newspaper article attacks the company for not sending anyone to the morgue. Once an employee is dead, big business no longer cares. The manager of human resources is called in by the owner of the company and told to investigate, and what he finds out about the woman and himself is the centre of the novel. His investigation becomes a personal obsession, taking over his life.” But hidden away between the lines of Yehosua’s quiet novel, something else is going on. Behind the mystery of the dead woman, there is another set of preoccupations which has nothing to do with a lonely Russian immigrant tragically killed by a bomb. First, there is an inquiry into one of your Yehosua’s main preoccupations, the family. The manager of human resources, we never find out his name, has only recently divorced and worries about his teenage daughter. The first thing he thinks when he is called in by his boss is that he’s due to collect her ‘cause his ex-wife is out of town. He in turn pulls in his secretary who has to bring in her baby to work. The victim of the bomb is divorced and lives quite alone, her teenage son lives back in Central Asia. Everywhere in the novel, families are falling apart. This is just the part of the malaise of modern day Israel, one of Yehosua’s main subjects. “Everything around is collapsing”, says one character.

There are quiet references throughout to unemployment, army service and terrorism. The manager of human resources doesn’t let his daughter take the bus because of fear of bombings. Quietly a whole society and its concerns are brought to life. He’s one of the great chronicles of contemporary Israel. Your eye is constantly caught by the telling detail. It is a sad book about lonely, decent people living through hard times and yet the two dominant characters are those who try to do good. That’s where their obsession leads them. The real values that come to the surface in this deeply moral book are love and caring for each other in anxious and fragmented times. How we can do that is the book’s central concern. A couple of years after the publication of this book, there was a big controversy in America with an attack on the diaspora. Yehosua stirred controversy at the opening panel of the centennial celebration of the American Jewish Committee after saying, “That only the state of Israel can ensure the survival of the Jewish people.” His passionate presentation took other panellists by surprise and became the talk of the conference. “For me, Abraham Yehosua, there is no alternative.” he said. “I cannot keep my identity outside Israel. Being Israeli is my skin not my jacket. You are changing jackets, you are changing countries like changing jackets, I have my skin, the territory.”

The year after, he published his next novel “Friendly fire”, a long married couple are spending an unaccustomed week apart. The wife has flown to East Africa to grieve the death of her sister and her brother-in-law who’d suffered worse heartbreak years earlier. The husband familiar Yehosua character stays behind in Israel for his busy lift engineering consultancy, and his large demanding family. The chapters alternate between husband and wife creating a complex web of family relations, memories and discoveries with death looming large overall. Like so many of Yehosua’s novels, it’s about a family in Israel today. On the surface as again in most of Yehosua’s novels, everything about them is ordinary. Daniela is a middle-aged English teacher in Tel Aviv, her husband Yari is a lift engineer. She goes on a trip to Africa following the recent death of sister and her husband stays behind to look after his business and help with the grandchildren. Sometimes whole chapters go by and little happens. Yari is called to investigate a lift that doesn’t work or look after his grandchildren. The style too is deliberately flat. At one point, Daniella’s brother-in-law launches a passionate defence of simple Hebrew against the linguistic decoration of the Hebrew Bible. Daniella feels that the novel she’s reading is gearing up for an absurd twist. There are no absurd twists or fancy language in “Friendly Fire”. But the ordinariness of Yehosua’s novel is deceptive always, and in “Friendly Fire” as well.

First, these are ordinary people in an extraordinary place, contemporary Israel. Even the debate about lifts is not just about faulty engineering. The question is it a problem of design or the way it was later built becomes a metaphor for Israel itself. Were the problems of Israel today already there in the conception of the state? Can it be fixed? Then as the novel unwinds, it starts to fill with the dead. There is Daniella’s sister, of course, who died in Africa, and her son, Eyal killed by friendly fire on military service in Israel. The man complaining about the faulty lift is also in mourning for a son killed in the army. And as the book fills with the dead, a new question takes over, how do we mourn the dead? Can we? Should we let go of their memory? Daniella’s brother-in-law stays in Africa because he’s broken with Israel following his son’s accidental death. He cannot forgive Israel and has disconnected, a word he uses over and over. His wife’s death is almost incidental to the central tragedy of his life. Daniella is horrified. How can he turn his back on Israel, on his wife’s memory and on life itself? With his angry attacks on Israel and Judaism and Daniella’s response, the book comes to life. What was hidden erupts full of life. In 2013, Yehosua published a novel called “The Extra”. Noga, a harpist in her early 40s returns to Israel from Holland where she plays in an orchestra. Her father has died recently and her mother is trying to decide whether to stay in Jerusalem or to live near her son in Tel Aviv.

It becomes a choice, not just between two cities, but between two ideas of Israel. His fiction is rarely what it seems and the extra is no exception. It seems to be about a widow making a straightforward choice between two places and how her children react. However, it’s more a novel about ordinary people in an extraordinary place Israel, again. The central characters could not be more ordinary. Noga, an musician, a younger brother Honey runs his own media company, and their father was an engineer. However, the novel starts to move within an interesting triangle, Anam, where Noga lives in Holland stands for an idealised view of Europe and is always described as secure and liberal, cultured with its very civilised orchestra. Jerusalem where her parents lived is associated with Judaism and the past. Noga finds it hard to deal with the ultra orthodox children from upstairs. Tel Aviv, by contrast is the white city, modern, liberal, secular. This may sound schematic, but Yehosua works is into the texture of the novel. The first half of the novel turns around Noga’s mother’s choice between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which increasingly stands for the two sides of modern day Israel. Which should she choose? Which should Israel choose? The second half of the novel becomes increasingly preoccupied with a very different choice. At the beginning of the novel, we’re told that Noga had been married to Uriah, but she left him in Israel because she didn’t want to have children. This choice comes to dominate the novel. Both her brother and ex-husband now have children, why didn’t she? What lay behind her choice? The question underlying Noga’s decision and her mother’s choice are both about whether Israel has a future, what it should be, or indeed whether a thoughtful Israelis should abandon Israel altogether.

Yehosua sets out these choices for the reader to decide. A lifelong Zionist, he never imposes his beliefs on the reader. A lifelong Zionist, he writes here and in “Friendly Fire”, deeply dark questioning novels about the future and the state of Israel. Finally, there is the title “The Extra”. Noga’s brother finds her work as a film extra for the three months she stays in their mother’s apartment while their mother tries out living in Tel Aviv. It’s curious work for Harpers, but as always in Yehosua fiction, nothing is what it seems. Could it be that Noga treats everyone else as an extra, a minor character with no real say in their own lives? Yehosua once wrote that what made his generation of writers so dominant in Israeli literature was the balance they found between the reveal and the hidden. He and Amos Moss in particular were hugely influenced by Agnan. He could have been writing about himself. Yehosua’s quiet fiction about ordinary life always turns out to be something else, cleverer, darker, and more disturbing than it seems. Another novel written at this time is called “The Retrospective”. It’s a story of two halves and it begins Santiago de Compostela in Spain. An Israeli film director has come to Spain to attend a retrospective season of his films. Like Yehosua himself at the time, he was in the central characters in his 70s. He’s come to see his old films. It feels like a great director’s last hurrah looking back over his work and his life. He reflects on his relationships with three people, in particular Roof, who was always more than just his leading actress.

Toledano is the lead cinematographer and above all Shawl Trigano is onetime student, and then screenwriter and collaborator. The second half of the novel takes Moses back to Israel. Of course. Just as in the two previous novels, one moves between Africa and Israel, the other moves between Holland and Israel and this one moves between Spain and Israel. He has a favour to ask of his one-time student and then screenwriter and collaborator with whom he fell out. The screenwriter is still angry after all these years has his price. Moses must commit an act of atonement, an act which takes us back to an image which haunts the novel from the very beginning. It’s a novel like the others about the past and history, one man’s history and Jewish history. Right from the start, Santiago de Compostela might ring a few bells, it was one of those famous mediaeval pilgrimage sites. This novel will turn out to be in part about the relations between Christianity and the Jews, it’s also about questions of forgiveness, atonement and reconciliation. Above all however, the novel is about our relationship with the past, quietly reflectively, Yehosua circles around these questions. At one point someone tells Moses, the film director, that his mother believes in the filmmaker’s future, “My future.” he says, “At my age.” Moses hardly dares believe that he has a future. But looking back, he sees a career in slow decline. He looks at his early films in disbelief, they seem remote, far away and as for the present, he says the pot is still empty and the fire is still out.

And yet perhaps there is still time to find meaning at the end of his life, an act that might restore the relationships that really matter to him and bring a kind of fulfilment when he’s still so troubled and . In 2008, Yehosua wrote a piece called “Corruption and Occupation” for the Guardian Newspaper. “Police investigations” he wrote, “Commissions of inquiry examining the errors committed during the Lebanon war of 2006, repugnant at former president Moshe Katsav’s alleged sex crimes and now Prime Minister announcement that with charges of corruption swirling about him, he will resign in September.” All of this suggests profound wounds in Israel’s moral clean. “Old Israelis like myself are stupefied” he wrote “by the scope and scale of today’s corruption. What is coming to light is a much deeper evil, a loss of values within Israeli society and its governments such as never existed before. This moral deterioration is most prominent in the behaviour of today’s accused who are much more impudent and aggressive than in the past. This contrast between his passionate Zionism and this growing deep pessimism, which haunts the later novels is a fascinating contrast in Yehosua’s work, particularly in his later work. He died on the 14th of June, 2022, survived by his three children. Eulogising Yehosua, president Isaac Al called him "one of Israel’s greatest authors in all generations who gifted us his unforgettable works, which will continue to accompany us for generations.

His works which drew inspiration from our nation’s treasures reflected us in an accurate, sharp, loving, and sometimes painful mirror image. He aroused in us a mosaic of deep emotions.” Yehosua was one of Israel’s greatest writers. He was awarded the Israel Prize and was translated into almost 30 languages. He is known for his beautifully observed portrayals of Jewish life, particularly in contemporary Israel. And it is now over 50 years since he published his first short stories. On the surface as I say, his characters seem ordinary often. But Israel was Yehosua’s great subject. Unlike most of the best known Israeli writers, he was a Safardi Jew, and this is very important for understanding Yehosua. The others were Ashkenazi, Agnan, born in Galicia, Benjamin Tammuz, Russian, Amichai, German, Applefelt from Bukovina. His family, Yehosua’s family came from Solanica in the mid 19th century, not because of pogroms, not because of antisemitism, because of next year in Jerusalem. “In my DNA, the Zionist gene is extremely strong.” He first came to critical attention with the short story collections he published in the 60s. Faulkner in particular, taught him how to combine history with specific attachment to a particular place, which is hugely important in Yehosua.

The specific location, the place that he’s writing about. His later novels became about characters approaching old age. The tunnel, for example, is about a road engineer in his 70s trying to deal with the onset of dementia. Of course, these novels are not just about people dealing with their own pasts, they’re also about Israel’s pasts. “In the tunnel, the road engineer and a young colleague visit grave. Silently they read the names and dates engraved on the stones, "Two births for ”, the first in the diaspora, the second the real one, the data is Aliat, the land of Israel. These late novels have a wonderful restraint, an increasingly feeling. And yet modern day Israel in these late novels seems more troubled. The real values that come to the surface in “A Woman in Jerusalem”, for example, are the importance of love and caring for each other. A lifelong Zionist, Yehosua never idealised Israel. When I once asked him how he would like to be remembered, he said, “Without missing a beat, as an honest writer.” And that’s exactly what he was. And let me just see if there are any questions that you have.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Remain Stanger. “Is his depiction of Israel a maternal identification reminiscent of a burgeoning freedom seeking young adult?”

A: What a very, very interesting question Romain. Is his depiction of Israel a maternal identification? I’m not sure what the answer is to that. His wife, who was a long time practising psychoanalyst might’ve been able to give you a better answer. I wouldn’t say a maternal identification, although he does often write about women characters and is interested in women characters like Noga and her mother trying to choose between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And I don’t really think of him as a freedom seeking young adult perhaps partly because most of the novels of his I’ve read, he wrote much in his older life. And also when I met him, he was of course by then well into his 70s. So I’m afraid, Romain, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t really have an answer to that. I think what is absolutely central to his writing is this, I wouldn’t say ambivalence about Israel because he was passionate about Israel, he was a passionate lifelong Zionist. And yet, there were times when he was both in person and in his writing a fierce critic of Israel, particularly in more recent years, particularly, it’s what he sensed as its moral corruption. And I often wonder what he would’ve made of the current situation and the current government in Israel. And if anyone has any answers to that, I’d be fascinated to hear them.

Q: Gita Khan, interesting insights about Yehosua’s work, “Could we know more about his personal life? Was he happily married? Did he manage to earn a living from his writing? Did he retain a strong Zionist conviction?”

A: Well, let me take these one by one, was he happily married? Yes, he was, he and his wife were happily married for many, many years until her death, she predeceased him by a few years. I met her also together with him, and she was a lovely, lovely person. Did he manage to earn a living from his writing? Yes, he was a very prolific author, but he also taught at the University of Haifa for many years, and that also helped make his living, helped him make his living. Did he retain a strong Zionist conviction? Yes, absolutely. He was a passionate, lifelong Zionist and yet I think became increasingly disillusioned towards the end of his life with what he saw as the moral corruption in Israel, of Israel. And as I said a moment ago, I would be very interested to know what he would’ve made of Netanyahu and of the current coalition government. I suspect he would, he only died two years ago, but I suspect he would not have been a great admirer.

“He would no doubt be appalled by the morality of the current government.” says HE. I think he probably would’ve been. Yes, I think he probably would’ve been. But I hesitate because I don’t know what his view would’ve been of the terrible massacres in October, and what has happened since then, and particularly the problematic coverage of British and American mainstream media. I don’t think he would’ve approved of that, but I think you’re right HE, I think he would’ve been appalled.

Ellie Strauss, “I found his novel 'Journey to the End of the Millennium’ fascinating. His depiction of clashing cultures especially, I reread parts or I reread parts again and again.” Clashing cultures is, you are absolutely right Ellie, clashing cultures is a very important part of Yehosua’s writing about, “In The Tunnel” in particular, one of his last, his very last novels is very much about Arab culture and Israeli culture, and “Friendly Fire” is very much about Africa and on the one hand, and Israel on the other. And it’s interesting how often he moves between different Israel and other countries, Spain, Africa, Holland, ideas and ideals of Europe and Israel. So I agree, I think that subject was something that really interested him. And yet he considered himself very much part of Israel despite this. But his writing tells a different tale I think.

Monty’s iPad, “Maybe in the light of what A.B. Yehosua said about the Jews, the diaspora in Israel, he should be regarded as a prophet, a person who tells what will happen in the future.” That’s a very interesting thought. I don’t think he saw himself as a prophet. I think he saw himself as very much part of the Israel, post independence Israel, which as a young man he felt very much part of. And I’m not sure that even in his latest novels that he had a strong sense of what would happen to Israel in the future. I think he had a strong sense of what was happening in the present in Israel, and that concerned him greatly. But I don’t think he had a strong sense of what might happen in the future, or at least didn’t seem to write about that. , “You are illuminating insights and portrayal, much appreciating.

Joy.” Thank you very much Josie Much. I’m most grateful to you for your kind words.

Rita, thank you for your kind words also.

Hillel Schenker, “It should be noted that Yehosua also wrote many op-ed articles about the politics of the day. He caused a big controversy when he wrote that he no longer believed that a two state solution was possible because of the expansion of the settlements. Therefore he claimed the only option was a one state solution, though we didn’t say how that could be achieved.” Thank you Hillel, for such an interesting set of remarks. Yes, he did write many op-ed articles about the politics of the day. And yes, he did cause a big controversy when he wrote that he no longer believed in a two state solution, and only believed in a one state solution. And you know, this is a question of course which dominates the discussion about Israel to this day, and is unresolved. He wasn’t the only person who was unclear about how that could be achieved, whether a one state solution or two state solution. And I dread to think what he would’ve made of recent events and the tragedy of the hostages and so on.

Q: Faye Hassell asks, “Are any of his children writers?”

A: I’m afraid, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about his children actually. We didn’t talk about them when we met.

Q: Barbara asks a very good question, “What’s a good book of his to start with?”

A: Hmm. Well, the reason I focused on the four more recent novels that I mentioned is because I’m a big fan of all of them, particularly perhaps “Friendly Fire”. And “The Extra” is really interesting about the choice between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and what they stand for as places in Israel or the two Israels that they stand for. And “A Woman in Jerusalem” is a very moving and fascinating story. They’re all very similar, I would say. So I don’t think it would matter terribly much which one of those three you started with. They’re all similar because they’re all about ordinary Israeli people and they’re all about Israel and contemporary present day Israel and what kind of society it is. So, and I think they all give a good introduction to his very plain style and also this fascinating idea that he had, that he inherited from Yehosua of hidden drawers, secret drawers, which is really at the heart I think of Yehosua’s writing. Agnan was a huge influence on him. And so I think any of those three novels would be a good place to start personally.

Lynn Kleinman, “The problems I’ve had with Yehosua is the lack of sympathetic principle characters, especially in ‘The Liberated Bride’.” Lynn, I’m sorry to hear that. I find his principle characters male and female, very sympathetic, partly because they’re faced with real dilemmas, significant choices. And particularly I think as he grew older and in his later novels, which is perhaps rather why he dwelt on them, perhaps a bit too much, but that he is really interested in the problems posed by old age, the problems facing Israel as he grows older. So I find him a very human author, very interested in creating sympathetic characters faced with real dilemmas, real issues, sometimes quite heartbreaking issues. So I’m sorry if we disagree about that, but I think that’s partly what I so like about Yehosua I’m afraid. So I’m sorry that we, I’m sorry to disagree.

Q: Paula Finkelstein also asked, “What novel you would recommend for a beginner.”

A: Well, as I say, I think those three are both representative of the writing, and I would also add perhaps “The Tunnel”, which was also very interesting novel about old age, I would say. And Adele Hunter recommends two early books, “The Lover” and a “Late Divorce”.

So thank you very much for that, Adele, I appreciate that. As I’m sure has become clear by now, I’m a great fan of his later novels, less so of his early books, but it’s very good to have those recommendations, “The Lover” and a “Late Divorce”. So thank you for that Adele.

Q: Oh, Nan Soer asks, “Please repeat the ones you recommend to start with.”

A: Yes. Okay, hang on, let me just get the titles. “Friendly Fire”. About the wife who goes to Africa after her sister’s death and the injured, the lift engineer. And I would also recommend “The Extra” about the harpist from Holland whose mother is choosing between Holland, sorry, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And finally “The Tunnel”, which was one of his very last novels. And was a very powerful novel about Israel’s ancient past.

Q: Nasower, “Did he write a book about the death of a wife?”

A: I’m not sure that he did. Well, except of course “Friendly Fire” in which a sister dies who is married. So, but she isn’t really the central character, I would say it’s her living sister and the sister’s husband who are the two central characters. But it’s perfectly possible that one of his other books is about the death of a wife. I don’t know. Curiously, after his own wife died, I’m not aware that he wrote any novels about the death of the wife. So I think “Friendly Fire” might be the nearest, but that’s the thought I have, I’m afraid.

Leaper Roth says, I hope I pronounced your name correctly, “The video version of Mr. Manny, hard to find and difficult but amazing to watch. Thank you for that recommendation.” Yes, I think that is more or less it. I’m sorry if I haven’t had time to get back to any other questions. Thank you so much for your kind messages. Thank you so much for your very interesting suggestions.

And next week, as I say, I’ll be talking about a very different writer, Aharon Appelfeld. And you might be interested to know that Penguin Modern Classics are about to republish a whole number of Applefelt’s novels. As soon as I know which they are, I will let you know next week. Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you.