Mr. Mani [Hardcover]

Abraham B. Yehoshua (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 1992

Five conversations between two people reconstruct the history of the dying Mani clan, describing the lives of six generations of its members from their emigration from Greece to Palestine in 1848 to the mid-1980s. 10,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Israeli writer's previous novels ( A Late Divorce ; Five Seasons ) were critically acclaimed in this country; here he offers another richly textured, provocative work. An account of six generations of the Manis, a Jewish family living in the Middle East, the book is arranged in the form of five "conversations," with the speech of only one of the two speakers present on the page. From 1982, the narrative moves backward to 1848, tracing dark domestic dramas occurring against the backdrop of historical events. Speakers--each with a strong, distinctive voice--include a contemporary Israeli woman, a Nazi soldier stationed in Crete during WW II, a British Jewish soldier in Palestine after WW I, a Jewish doctor in Galicia and a Jewish merchant in Athens. Spinning a cat's cradle of complex relationships, Yehoshua reaches beyond realism to the realms of mystery, coincidence and fate. His prose is simple and clear, rising to passages of lyricism and eloquence, as he gradually discloses the tragedy that haunts every generation of the Mani family: a succession of self-destructive, suicidal men and of fathers who die young, leaving emotionally needy children. Hints of a dread secret accrete through the narrative, to be revealed at the close. Yet the novel's message speaks to the indomitable spirit that keeps families alive.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A self-consciously experimental novel from Israeli writer Yehoshua (Five Seasons, A Late Divorce, etc.) in which a family's history is told backwards in one-sided conversations. There are five conversations, each accompanied by a brief foreword and afterword--sort of program notes--that explicate as well as wrap up the story. The conversations themselves, with the exception of the final one, are those of strangers who recall their subsequently significant interventions in the history of the Mani family, currently of Jerusalem but once residents of Greece. Beginning in present-day Israel, Hagar Shiloh, back on the kibbutz where she was reared, tells her mother how she saved Mr. Mani, the father of her lover, from committing suicide. Conversation number two, between a German soldier and his grandmother, takes place on Crete during WW II and accounts for Mr. Mani's childhood escape from the Germans. The third conversation (which has appeared in The New Yorker) details the reprieve that British authorities devise in WW I for the then-current Mr. Mani, on trial for treason. And so genealogy retreats through conversations with a Polish doctor, whose sister's departure from Jerusalem drove Moshe Mani to suicide in 1899, and ends as Avraham Mani, in Athens, confesses in 1848 to his aged rabbi that he has impregnated his widowed daughter-in-law so that the family would continue. Not as dryly schematic as Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, but the structure, however innovative and brilliantly executed, is constraining; and retrohistory too much resembles all those confusing biblical lists of A's begetting B's. Still, an interesting, and certainly challenging, read. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (February 9, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385267924
• ISBN-13: 978-0385267922
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #438,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #65 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Jewish

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book., November 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mr. Mani (Harvest in Translation) (Paperback)

Told from the perspective of the people who encounter the Mani family throughout the generations this book is amazing. WHile it takes a few pages to get used to the fact that the Mani men will not be speaking for themselves, once that is accepted this book moves along making you think and feel for these people that you only encounter through the perspective of strangers. What's even better is that you see a character in one generation from one perspective and then in the next chapter the character is considerably younger and there is some one else's perspective. So the father about to commit suicide and who is the mission of the first narrator becomes a child Jew that is an inconvenience to the Nazi character with a conscience of the second chapter. Where most experimental literature is only experimental, this book shows that storytelling and style don't need to be mutually exclusive.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 stars, November 18, 2004

By 

Adam Gordon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Mani (Harvest in Translation) (Paperback)

I stopped to write a review only because I saw that all five stars were not fully checked. One can like or not like the content of the book, but as a exposition of writing craft it is - bar none - the best book in the world. (Allright, I'll be circumspect, maybe one of the best). It will blow you away and change the way you think about the novel as a literary form. A genius at his best, no less.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How did a Mere Human Write this Masterpiece?, December 27, 2000

By 

Joy Hope Schneider (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Mani (Harvest in Translation) (Paperback)

I concur with other readers that "Mr. Mani" stands in a class of its own. The book, which spans centuries, manages to do so while remaining riveting and vivid. That I remember it years after re-reading it, that I am now trying to write my own novel allows me to now see how truly masterful this book is. If you don't write you may not realize how much had to go into the leaping stories, the profundity of character and the great subject this author took on and completed. Maybe a few on this earth are as blessed with the gift of creation, but they are very few indeed.