A. B. Yehoshua

Salvar a los clásicos del olvido, con la ayuda de grandes escritores de hoy. Éste es el sentido de «Save the Story», una colección ideada por Alessandro Baricco, al cuidado de la Scuola Holden para f

A.B. Yehoshua nos brinda, con maestría, una historia familiar en la que los detalles de la vida cotidiana, nítidamente retratados, encuentran de manera sorprendente su eco en los misterios más antiguos de la humanidad. Una pareja casada desde hace mas de treinta años, y que siempre ha estado unida, tiene que pasar una semana separada. El marido, ingeniero, permanece en Tel Aviv al cuidado de la familia y trata de descubrir y reparar un extraño silbido que sale inexplicablemente de unos ascensores que diseño. La mujer viaja a Tanzania para encontrarse con su cuñado que, tras la perdida de su hijo y su esposa, elude su pena trabajando en unos yacimientos arqueologicos. La novela explora el poder de la rabia y la tristeza ante la realidad turbulenta que les rodea y en la que su deseo de llevar una vida normal y el amor de tantos años se obstinan en mantener unida a la familia.

Un terrorista se inmola en el mercado de Jerusalen. Una mujer muere: era extranjera, vivía sola y nadie reclama su cadáver en la morgue. Sin embargo, Julia Ragayev tenía un trabajo; era empleada de la limpieza en una gran panificadora. Un periodista sin escrupulos aprovecha el caso para denunciar la "falta de humanidad" de la empresa, que ni siquiera se habia percatado de la ausencia de su empleada. El director de recursos humanos tiene que hacerse cargo del asunto y buscar remedio a los daños de imagen sufridos. Pero, tras asistir al emotivo entierro de la mujer, el caso se convierte para el en algo mas importante que recuperar la simpatia de la opinion publica. Tendra que devolver a Julia a su pueblo natal y su verdadero cometido consistira en encontrar en su interior los recursos humanos necesarios para vencer la frialdad que parece extenderse sobre el mundo y sobre si mismo. "Una punzante parabola sobre la muerte, el terrorismo, la violencia, el miedo, la responsabilidad de los hombres frente a la ceguera y la locura de la Historia" (Andre Clavel, Lire).

La historia de una desolada búsqueda en dos planos, el personal y el profesional. Situada en los "años de esperanza", en el Israel anterior a la Intifada, Yehoshúa dibuja en paralelo dos tramas principales protagonizadas por el mismo hombre: el profesor Riblin. Especialista en Oriente Medio, Riblin intenta clarificar, por una parte, el porque de la falta de integracion entre arabes e israelies y, por otra, la causa del inesperado divorcio de su hijo mayor, que fue repudiado por su esposa. Gracias a esta estrategia, Yehoshua describe un mundo con infinidad de matices y con las complejidades propias de la vida en situaciones de maximo riesgo. "Yehoshua presenta dos mundos, el de la mayoria en Israel y el de la minoria arabe, a la manera en que Tolstoi escribio acerca de la guerra y la paz: en cierto sentido, dos novelas, aunque intimamente unidas" (Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review); "Con Amos Oz y David Grossman, Abraham B. Yehoshua forma el triangulo de oro de las letras israelies. De esos tres mosqueteros, Yehoshua es sin duda el mas combativo... Una obstinacion ejemplar" (Andre Clavel, L& x02019;Express)

"Un hombre percibe un misterio en su mujer: no sabe ya quién es la esposa amadísima que habla en sueños, a quien sigue sin lograr alcanzar. El hombre persigue al amante de ella, el joven melancólico que ha devuelto el amor a la pareja y que un día desaparece. ¿Ha muerto o acaso ha desertado huyendo de una guerra cuyos motivos no comprende? El amor llega también de la mano del joven operario de su taller, que le ayuda en su búsqueda y cuyo corazón, como el de la hija de la pareja, sabe superar los confl ictos más ancestrales. En esta reconstrucción a varias voces del destino de una familia se entremezclan y convergen magistralmente diversas historias de mundos cercanos y distantes al mismo tiempo, que pese al amor, refl ejan la imposibilidad de conocer verdaderamente quién vive a nuestro lado."

´La extraordinaria novela de Yehosh?a nos embruja en el fin del primer milenio a través de sus polos opuestos: norte y sur, cristianos y judíos, amores y miedos; una brillante novela de viajes.ª

Situada en el Israel anterior a la Intifada, La novia liberada es la historia de una doble obsesión, de una desolada búsqueda en dos planos, el personal y el profesional. Yehoshúa dibuja en paralelo dos tramas protagonizadas por el profesor Yojanan Riblin, que intenta clarificar, por una parte, el porque de la falta de integracion entre arabes e israelies y, por otra, el porque del inesperado divorcio de su hijo mayor. Riblin se deja guiar por una alumna arabe israeli que lo conducira a traves del Israel de la minoria arabe, con el fin de descubrirle el alma secreta de su pueblo. Simultaneamente, se embarcara en una investigacion, que lo lleva a realizar sorprendentes averiguaciones sobre la historia de la familia de su ex nuera. Gracias a esta estrategia que funde lo publico con lo privado, Yehoshua se entrega al trazado de un mundo con infinidad de matices y lleno de las complejidades propias de la vida en situaciones de maximo riesgo. Una novela que ha evocado Guerra y paz o Las mil y una noches.

A husband seeks his wifes lover who is lost in the turbulence of Israels Yom Kippur War. As the story of his quest unfolds and grows in intensity, the main protagonists are drawn into the search and transformed by it: through the different perspective of husband, wife, teenage daughter, young Arab emerges a complex picture of the uneasy present, the tension between generations, between Israels past and future, between Jews and Arabs. The Lover was A.B. Yehoshuas first novel and immediately brought him international recognition. It is brilliant, compassionate and highly original and as accomplished as all his later works.

An experiment is under way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: a woman, recently widowed, is starting a trial period in assisted living, mainly to placate her over-anxious son, whilst in Jerusalem her daughter Noga, a young harpist, returns from her job with a Dutch orchestra to look after the family apartment. To enliven her stay, Nogas brother finds work for her - playing roles as an extra in film, TV, and in the opera Carmen. The random roles Noga is thrust into resonate strangely with her own life which she begins to re-evaluate. Central to her past is the fact that she refused to have children, resulting in the break-up of her marriage. No-one in her family understood her motives for not wanting children and everyone has a different explanation for it. Now, a chance encounter with her former husband reveals his continuing powerful, love as well as a shocking deed she committed during their marriage. But Noga is a free spirit neither tied to the past nor defined by it, and always keen to push boundaries. She lives for her music and is willing to go wherever it takes her. The three-month experiment proves as much of a test for her as for her mother and both are radically transformed by the end. A.B. Yehoshua is as creative, humorous and provocative as ever in The Extra, exploring themes familiar to him of love, family relationships and artistic ambitions, set mainly in an ever-changing Jerusalem.

Yehuda Kaminka, a retired teacher, returns to Israel from the U.S. to divorce his estranged wife who was committed to a mental asylum after she stabbed him. This impending divorce inevitably throws into turmoil the couples three children and grandson. Yehudas nine days, leading up to Passover, are remembered by different members of the family: A.B. Yehoshuas brilliance reveals itself in these different voices, each a minor masterpiece.

An ageing film director, Yair Moses, has been invited to the Spanish pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela to attend a retrospective of his early work. As he and Ruth, his leading actress and former muse, settle into their room at the parador, Moses notices a painting depicting the classical story of an elderly prisoner nursing at the breast of a young woman. For the first time in decades, Moses recalls a similar scene from one of his early films, which led to his dramatic estrangement from his screenwriter, Trigano. Triganos spirit haunts the retrospective, as the director and actress re-live each film. They question artistic decisions and are surprised at how differently each remembers the past, slowly revealing to each other past reasons for decisions taken at the time. A troubled Moses decides to seek out the elusive Trigano to settle their differences, and to propose a new collaboration. But the reluctant screenwriter demands an outrageous price for this reconciliation: Moses must commit to a deeply disturbing act of atonement. Ultimately, reality and the sublime mingle when Moses has an epiphany, as he nears the end of his quest and the source of his imagination. Searching, witty and trenchant, this work by an internationally respected and original writer is a meditation on the roots of artistic inspiration, the limits and the truth of memory, and the struggle for artistic creation.

Open Heart is a psychological tour de fource about love and the nature of mans soul. From the opening lines of this first-person narrative, the reader is propelled into the mind of Dr. Benjamin Rubin, an ambitious young internist, who is jockeying for position with the hospitals top surgeons. But it isnt until Benjy learns that his position has been terminated, and that he has been selected to accompany the hospital administrator and his wife to India to retrieve their ailing daughter, that Yehoshua sets his hero on a journey of self-discovery.

Yochanan Rivlin, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Haifa University, is determined to understand two conflicts that have become central to his life: the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, which he feels will help him better understand the Arab mind and, more personally, his sons divorce. His is a double search for truth, each involving a different bride-Samaher, his newly-wed Arab research assistant from a village in the Galilee, and Galya, who deserted his son in Jerusalem with no explanation. Against his wifes better judgment, Rivlin tries obsessively to get to the core of both problems, crossing boundaries at once personal and political-man and wife, father and son, teacher and pupil, Jew and Arab. With equal measures of energy, humour, anxiety, and poetry, Yehoshua portrays a life sometimes improbable, often dark, and infinitely rich. The Liberated Bride is a feat of masterly storytelling from one of the worlds great novelists. "The Liberated Bride seethes with emotions, dreams, ideas, humor, pathos, all against a backdrop of violence, conflict, and terror." The Sun (New York) "Yehoshua seeks to present two worlds, those of Israels Jewish majority and its Arab minority. He has done it rather as Tolstoy wrote of war and peace: two novels, in a sense, yet intimately joined. Paradoxically -and paradoxis the books engendering force -the war is mainly reflected in the zestfully intricate quarrels in the Jewish part of the novel. The peace largely flowers when Rivlin finds himself breaking through the looking glass into the Arab story." Richard Eder, The New York Times "The Liberated Bride is tinged with the kind of innate, unavoidable suspense that the threat of bus bombs brings." Herald Tribune "The boundaries that are broken down in The Liberated Bride include those within the self and others; mystical boundaries between self and God; political and cultural boundaries and finally, the stylistic boundaries of the novel itself, which Yehoshua is constantly stretching in different directions." International Jerusalem Post "A splendidly realized search for the causes of ruptures that rend families and nations: both timely and timeless." Kirkus Review

In the autumn, Molkhos wife dies. His years of loving care have ended and his newfound freedom proves unlike the one he had imagined. It is an uneasy freedom, filled with the erotic fantasies of a man who must fall in love, but whose longing for meaningful relationships is held hostage by the spirit of his wife. Five Seasons is a subtle and often comic novel about love and renewal, and the determination of a seasoned heart to love.

Life in the Yaari family is full, complicated and often humorous, but beyond it lies a fragile society deeply uneasy with itself and badly scarred, with each family harbouring its own ghosts. Ever-creative, A.B. Yehoshuas short, interwoven chapters create a duet-like narrative which penetrates deeply into human relationships. He taps into the psyche of the reader as he taps into the psyche of his country, and we emerge altered by what we have read. "Yehoshua ... has been one of his countrys most vital chroniclers and critics." Ethan Bronner, The New York Times Book Review "Yehoshua has long been praised for his Faulknerian novels and though the two rather unexceptional middle class Israeli families in Friendly Fire lack the gothic appurtenances of the Snopeses and Compsons, his story is not short on sound and fury." Eric Banks, Financial Times "None of Yehoshuas books, no matter how personal, is without political, historical and religious importance. Friendly Fire is no exception." Haaretz

Now an award-winning feature film The Human Resources Manager A suicide bomb explodes in a Jerusalem market. One of the victims is a migrant worker without any papers, only a salary slip from the bakery where she worked as a night cleaner. As her body lies unclaimed in the morgue, her employers are labelled unfeeling and inhuman by a local journalist. The manager of human resources is given the task of discovering who she was and why she had come to Jerusalem. As the image of this once-beautiful dead woman begins to obsess him, the manager turns this duty into a personal mission - he is no longer just saving his companys reputation by trying to discover her identity and assure her of a dignified funeral. He is now restoring her not only to her family and country but also to common humanity - whilst at the same time conquering the hardness of his own heart.

Rachele Luzzatto is the only daughter of a Jewish family in northern Italy. Curious and intelligent, she is caught between her interest in religions her own and others and her fathers violent rejection of them all. A disagreement ensues between them about the part she is given in the school nativity play. At the same time, she discovers that her father is ill; the severity of his illness is only revealed to her very gradually while her teacher, various members of her family and even her rabbi offer her wide-ranging and humane support. A.B. Yehoshua paints a complex, and humorous, picture of conflicting religious identities and historical memory in this tender character study of a young girl at the threshold of adulthood.

The year is 999 A.D. Christians in Europe are preparing themselves for the arrival of the Messiah at the millennium and religious fervour is in the air. Sailing from the North African port of Tangier to a small, distant town called Paris are a Jewish merchant, Ben Attar, his two beloved wives and his Arab partner, Abu Lutfi. They have come for a meeting with their third partner the widower, Raphael Abulafia who has been forced to turn his back on their previous trading partnership because of his new wifes distrust of the dual marriage of Ben Attar. The latter turns this annual trading voyage into a personal quest to legitimise his second wife, restore his honour and, equally important, to show others the richness and humanity in his way of life. A confrontation ensues between people of different cultures whose ways of living and loving are so different, and yet who are of the same religion, believe in the same God and in the same morality. Thus we enter a profound human drama whose moral conflicts of fidelity and desire resonate deeply with our times. A. B. Yehoshua has imaginatively recreated a medieval world with its merchant trade in great depth and sensuous detail. His evocation of one mans love is lyrical, erotic even, and A Journey to the End of the Millennium will rank with the best of Yehoshuas work.

This new edition of A. B. Yehoshuas novellas and short stories includes two stories which did not previously appear in the hardback edition published in 1988, and no longer includes Mr. Mani which, in the intervening years, has been developed into a prize-winning novel. The development of the authors style can be traced from its dark beginnings in stories such as The Yatir Evening Express, about a village which decides to vent its frustration at its isolation and insignificance on the evening express. Isolation and loneliness are central to Yehoshuas concerns, whether it be peoples isolation from each other, from their community or from their family. The pain of this isolation is intense, as in the title story in which the distance between an ageing poet and his simple son is agonising. In Facing the Forests, a fire-watchers isolation gives rise to deep longings for tragedy a story which has since been seen to symbolise the relationship between Jew and Arab in Israel. Several of the stories deal with people thrust into positions of responsibility and the feelings of frustration and impotence which ensue are disturbing murderous even. In Three Days and a Child, a man agrees to care for the three-year old son of a former lover. Those three days are marked by a strange detachment and sadistic, heart-stopping neglect of the child. The stories are ironic and understated, and the pace masterly. This collection confirms Yehoshuas talent as a major short-story writer. He has been awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for his entire uvre.