“Man of peace”, “activist”, “committed writer”, key words evoked on the occasion of the disappearance of the Israeli writer Avraham Yehoshua. The author, Israel Prize in 1995, winner of the Medici Foreign Prize in 2012 and figure of the Israeli anti-occupation left, died Tuesday, June 14, at the age of 85.
” In our life, there are decisions that we have made, but there are changes that come indirectly, unconsciously, subconsciously, to change us. That’s what happens in the novel “said Avraham Yehoshua in 2016 at the microphone of RFI. All his life, the Israeli writer was convinced of the influence of literature on us.
As much rooted in literature as he is committed to peace, Avraham Yehoshua has always defended human rights and opposed the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel. For this, Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke today in his tribute of a writer who ” evoked in us a mosaic of deep feelings “.
This lofty writer has written around twenty novels and plays translated from Hebrew into around thirty languages. Beyond Israeli culture, his profoundly humanist work explored all the cultures and all the souls of the Middle East.
“ Retrospective »
Born on December 19, 1936 in Jerusalem into a family of Sephardic intellectuals, Avraham Yehoshua is the son of parents of Greek and Moroccan origin. After having first chosen teaching, he decided at the end of his military service to become a writer. It was during a stay in Paris that he published his first short stories in 1963. An expert observer as well as a critic of the upheavals and transformations of Israeli society, he obtained in 1995 his country’s greatest cultural award, the prize of ‘Israel. Some, like Nitza Ben-Dov, professor of literature at the University of Haifa, consider him “ the greatest author ” Israeli, others see in the extent of his work even a “ Balzac of Israel “.
In 2012, he won the Prix Médicis Etranger and the Prize for the best foreign book with Retrospectivea melancholic 500-page novel about the mysteries of artistic creation, but also a sort of treatise on the clash of cultures between East and West. the The common thread of the book is the making of a film featuring a famous Israeli director and his conflicting relationships with a screenwriter, an actress and a director of photography, illustrating the tensions that all creators come up against.
A society in crisis
The figure, published in 2016, revolves around a society in crisis, knowing that Avraham Yehoshua especially digs into the question why more and more men and women do not want to have children. In his latest novel, The only daughterit echoes identity conflicts in the Middle East through the life of Rachele, a Jewish teenager, in an Ashkenazi family in Venice.
Among the general public, Yehoshua is best known for his commitment to peace, alongside writers Amos Oz and David Grossman. Because, beyond literature, he never ceased to call for peace with all Palestinians. Among other things, he participated in the Geneva Initiative for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. B’Tselem, an organization against the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, of which he was a member, paid tribute to him by speaking of a committed man who ” devoted his time and energy to equality, peace and human rights for all “.
With his death, his political commitment and his literary power will henceforth be linked forever.