New Books in Biography & Memoir24 Elo 2022

Yael Halevi-Wise, "The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua" (Penn State UP, 2020)

Once referred to by the New York Times as the "Israeli Faulkner," A. B. Yehoshua's fiction invites an assessment of Israel's Jewish inheritance and the moral and political options that the country currently faces in the Middle East. The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua is an insightful overview of the fiction, nonfiction, and hundreds of critical responses to the work of Israel's leading novelist. Instead of an exhaustive chronological-biographical account of Yehoshua's artistic growth, Yael Halevi-Wise calls for a systematic appreciation of the author's major themes and compositional patterns. Specifically, she argues for reading Yehoshua's novels as reflections on the "condition of Israel," constructed multifocally to engage four intersecting levels of signification: psychological, sociological, historical, and historiosophic. Each of the book's seven chapters employs a different interpretive method to showcase how Yehoshua's constructions of character psychology, social relations, national history, and historiosophic allusions to traditional Jewish symbols manifest themselves across his novels. The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua (Penn State UP, 2020) ends with a playful dialogue in the style of Yehoshua's masterpiece, Mr. Mani, that interrogates his definition of Jewish identity. Masterfully written, with full control of all the relevant materials, Halevi-Wise's assessment of Yehoshua will appeal to students and scholars of modern Jewish literature and Jewish studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

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Jaksot(2026)

Emma Parker, "Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) examines how autobiographical writing reflects the psychological and cultural afterlives of th...

7 Elo 39min

Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu

"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which his father had fought. This is the story...

5 Elo 0s

Matthew Pinsker, "Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Norton, 2026)

We know Abraham Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and leadership: Lincoln was a mas...

5 Elo 1h 12min

Jonathan Cheng, "Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult" (Knopf, 2026)

Of the two Koreas, it is the South which appears much the more Christian today, with all major cities dotted with church spires and illuminated crosses. But a century ago it was the northern half of t...

4 Elo 1h 3min

Abdelwahab Meddeb, "Returns to Marrakesh / Retour à Marrakech" (Syracuse UP, 2026)

Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Returns to Marrakesh, co-translated by Claudia Esposito and Laura Reeck and published by Syracuse University Press in 2026, chronicles Meddeb’s successive visits to the Red City fr...

1 Elo 31min

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and philosophical–with her exte...

30 Heinä 55min

Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English" (Yale UP, 2026)

Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German empress, she was named as heir successor by her ...

25 Heinä 58min

David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)

What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cultural critic David Denby to discuss his book Emine...

22 Heinä 51min