Here is an interview I found with A.B. Yehoshua while looking for something else on Yehoshua.
Yehoshua is my favorite Israeli novelist, and I have now completed nearly every one of his novels (I think I have two left). I also just finished reading his book of essays from 1980, "Between Right and Right," where he goes into detail of his positions: (1) Jews should migrate to Israel, which would make for a more diverse Israeli society, hopefully more kind; (2) the history of Judaism is one of exile, and that the irony is Jews could have returned to the "Holy Land" at nearly any time after the fall of Rome, and yet, did not, and still for the most part do not even when Israel was created as a State; (3) there is no justification for the State of Israel that makes sense in world history but one: Jews needed a homeland for physical safety from the anti-Semitism that emanated from Europe, culminating in the Holocaust. Yehoshua agrees with the charge that Israelis have oppressed Arabs/Palestinians since day one of the Zionist movement, and says a religious justification for Israel is not sufficient justification as any number of groups could start walking into homes of others talking about their right to be there from that perspective. Living in New Mexico, and seeing the Native American tribes still here, and knowing I am on their land, well, that was really brought home to me. My only surprise is Yehoshua never quoted Isaac Deutscher on this last point, because Yehoshua was recognizing the dual victimhood point Deutscher had made in his prophetic 1967 essay.
It is not that Yehoshua was or is correct in these remarks, though his arguments are both cogently made and are compelling. What I adored about the book of essays, again written earlier but published in 1980, is how thought provoking they were to read in 2018, and knowing how my own views about Israel have changed over the years.
Yehoshua is an interesting and compelling mind and persona. His novels, which I have only read in the English translations (as alas I have no facility for foreign languages, including especially Hebrew), read so beautifully to me, though nearly every one of the novels I have read have a dark moment that I sometimes have found baffling. I had just finished, before reading "Between Right and Right," "The Extra," Yehoshua's latest English translated novel. I found it to be one of his best. If I had to describe Yehoshua's novels, I would not recommend them to young people as the characters tend to be rooted in late middle age, and there is no longer any sense that anyone is correct about how to live one's life. It is not morose like Joyce Carol Oates, to take an extreme example, but there is melancholy, though that melancholy is richly mixed with irony and humor that comes from life in one's advancing age. I sleep better at night reading Yehoshua. Some have called him the Faulkner of Israeli literature, and there is that, to the extent Faulkner dealt with the burden of American Southern history, and Yehoshua deals with the burden of Zionism.
I highly recommend Yehoshua to those, like me, now in deepening middle age. :)
