A. B. Yehoshua
- Born
Abraham B. Yehoshua is an Israeli novelist, essayist and playwright
From 1963-67, Yehoshua lived and taught in Paris and served as the General Secretary of the World Union of Jewish Students. Since 1972, he has taught Comparative and Hebrew Literature at the University of Haifa, where he holds the rank of Full Professor. In 1975 he was a writer-in-residence at St Cross College, Oxford. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard (1977), the University of Chicago (1988, 1997, 2000) and Princeton (1992).
In 1972, A.B. Yehoshua received the Prime Minister’s Prize for Hebrew Literary Works. He won the National Jewish Book Award for Five Seasons in 1990 and in 2006, A Woman in Jerusalem was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In Italy, he has received the Grinzane Cavour Award, the Flaiano Superprize, the Giovanni Boccaccio Prize, and the Viareggio Prize for Lifetime Achievement. In 2003, his novel The Liberated Bride won both the Premio Napoli and the Lampedusa Literary Prize. Friendly Fire won the Premio Roma in 2008. In 2012, Yehoshua received the Prix Médicis étranger for his novel The Retrospective.
He was shortlisted, for his entire body of work, for The Man Booker International Prize 2005.
Background
Between 2005 - 2015, the Man Booker International Prize recognised one writer for their achievement in fiction.
Worth £60,000, the prize was awarded every two years to a living author who had published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.
The winner was chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel and there were no submissions from publishers.
The Man Booker International Prize was different from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlighted one writer’s overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. In focusing on overall literary excellence, the judges considered a writer’s body of work rather than a single novel.