Abraham B. Yehoshua

Novelist, essayist, and playwright

A.B. Yehoshua was born to a fifth-generation Jerusalem family. Yehoshua served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army from 1954 to 1957 and studied literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yehoshua lived and taught in Paris and served as the General Secretary of the World Union of Jewish Students.He has taught Comparative and Hebrew Literature at Haifa University, was a writer-in-residence at St. Cross College, Oxford and visiting professor at the universities of Harvard, Chicago and Princeton.

Yehoshua is the author of nine novels, three books of short stories, four plays, and four collections of essays. His most acclaimed novel, Mr Mani(1992), is a multigenerational look at Jewish identity and Israel through five conversations over the span of a century. His 2009 novel, Friendly Fire, explores the nature of Israeli family 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.