Transcript Abraham B. Yehoshua Mr. Mani

Abraham B. Yehoshua
Mr. Mani
Title: Mr. Mani
Author: Abraham B. Yehoshua
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 384
Publisher: , 0
ISBN: 1870015770
Format: PDF / Kindle / ePub
Size: 7.5 MB
Download: allowed
Description
Mr. Mani is a deeply affecting six-generation family saga, extending from nineteenth-century
Greece and Poland to British-occupied Palestine to German-occupied Crete and ultimately to
modern Israel. The narrative moves back through time and is told in five conversations about
the bizarrely fated Mani family. The climax takes place in Athens in 1848, with Avraham Mani's
overpowering tale about the death of his young son, Yosef, in Jerusalem. This is a profoundly
human novel, rich in drama, irony, and subtle wit.
Insightful reviews
Gauss74: In cinque dialoghi, di cui viene con una ardita ellissi tagliata la parte di uno dei due
colloquianti, viene raccontata in questo capolavoro la storia di due secoli di una famiglia ebrea,
che si dipana per otto generazioni. Due secoli lunghi e terribili, che cambieranno il mondo molto
di più di quanto ha fatto il millennio precedente, e dei quali nel bene e nel male il popolo ebraico
sarà profondo protagonista: insieme con le sue tradizioni, il suo modo di vedere la vita ed il
mondo, la sua identità cosi forte da risultare una sfida perenne agli stati nazionali; che con
l'avvento dell'imperialismo tardo ottocentesco sarà sempre meno tollerata, con i drammatici
risultati che conosciamo.
Dalla vita dura ma libera nel tollerante impero ottomano al fremente sguardo al futuro che arriva
con gli inglesi, dalla tragedia della shoah in un mondo di cui la follia nazista ha capovolto la
morale allo scontro senza fine tra due religioni che non arrivano a rispettarsi nella Israele
contemporanea.
Dalle acque nere della Vistola che diventeranno rosse di sangue al finto paradiso ginevrino, dai
chiassosi e coloratissimi mercati di Costantinopoli alle fredde pietre del muro del pianto in
Gerusalemme, insieme con la famiglia Mani il lettore rivive nel profondo il sorgere di speranze
sempre nuove e gli eventi che le funesteranno senza pietà, per un popolo che da due millenni
sembra inseguire un destino sempre più misterioso.
Colpisce molto come i protagonisti dei racconti, pur nella spiccatissima identità culturale del loro
popolo, sappiano conservare una profonda umanità che non sanno nascondere in alcun modo,
con tyutti i loro difetti e le loro paure ma anche con una sete di vivere che difficilmente si
incontra nella letteratura contemporanea.
Fa molto riflettere, come filo rosso di tuutto il libro, il senso di doloroso sradicamento che
contraddistingue tutti i Mani: ciascuno alle prese con un perpetuo peregrinare in terre straniere,
nell'ossessionata ricerca di risposte a domande che non sanno porsi in modo chiaro e di una
pace che sembra non arrrivare mai neanche dopo la fondazione di una patria.
Il tormento ma anche la missione del popolo ebraico di darsi una casa e di vivere in modo
pacifico nel mondo sembra essere il messaggio dell'intero libro.
Se le pagine più dure da digerire sono sicuramente quelle ambientate durante il dominio nazista
dell'isola di Creta, dove Yehoshua mostra di conoscere il pazzo e perverso meccanismo di
annientamento del pensiero e di rovesciamento della morale che ha reso possibile concepire la
Shoah (e che condurrà nel romanzo alla morte di due dei Mani, padre e figlio), quelle che più mi
hanno colpito non sono state quelle.
Alla fine del terzo racconto, quando un sottufficiale inglese di orginie ebraica riesce ad ottenere
con un astuto discorso la sospensione della pena di morte da parte del tribunale militare per la
spia Josef Mani, ho sentito un certo fastidio nei confronti degli ebrei. Mi sono parsi una specie di
setta segreta i cui membri si proteggono gli uni con gli altri al punto da arrivare a tradire la
propria patria (il sottufficiale era uns oldato in tempo di guerra, ed ha salvato la vita ad una
spia!) pur di non tradire la propria ascendenza culturale. Ripensandoci ho avuto momenti di
puro orrore, perchè ho capito che è da sentimenti di questo tipo che nasce l'antisemitismo con
tutti gli orrori che si trascina dietro. Perchè non ho pensato prima di tutto al fatto che era
comunque stata salvata una vita da una morte inutile? Da dove viene questo automatismo per
cui si prova rabbia al cospetto di una comunità che non sia quella dello stato, anche se in nome
di quella si agisce per il bene? La vergogna che ho provato mostra quanto sia prezioso questo
libro per vincere certi rischi ma anche quanto poco controllo abbiamo di noi stessi, e
conseguentemente quanto poco siamo al sicuro dal ritorno di simili tragedie. Occorre vigilare.
Nonostante sia un'opera che parla del popolo ebraico, non emerge solo questo: pagina dopo
pagina si colora un imponente arazzo dell'intera Europa di fine Ottocento/inizio novecento, e si
impara a pensarla ed a conoscerla molto più che da tanti eruditi ma piatti saggi storici; la
vividezza di questo panorama viene aumentata dall'impressionante coerenza geografica e
temporale che Yehoshua riesce a dare al dipanarsi di eventi che si distendono su
centocinquant'anni e che coinvolgono dozzine di persone. Da questo punto di vista, "Il signor
mani" può essere avvicinato al Decameron di Boccaccio senza sfigurare.
Era emersa già nella "scena Perduta" ma viene confermata qui la grande maestria di Yehoshua
nel genere letterario del dialogo, che diventa qui fondamento e cardine di tutto il libro.
Un capolavoro indimenticabile, dal quale si esce arricchiti di riflessioni e conoscenze, umane,
storiche e letterarie.
Judith Hannan: The back cover of Mr. Mani describes it as six-generation family saga. That is
true, but the form in which A.B. Yehoshua tells this story is so intimate that the reader never
becomes overwhelmed by the history and instead becomes deeply immersed in the characters.
What Yehosua does is tell the stories of the Mani family through a series of one-sided
conversations. Most of these conversations are narrated by people outside of the Mani family
but who intreact with them in some fashion. In this way, an aura of curiosity is woven throughout
the book. The Mani's are indeed a curious family moving between Poland, Greece, and Israel
for compelling personal, psycological, and religious reasons. Only at the end do we hear from
an actual Mani. His story is shaped by tragedy.
Chronologically, Mr. Mani begins in modern day Israel and extends backward in time through
1948 in Athens. So the tragedy at the end is really the story's beginning. I found this an
interesting way to read a history, as if I was exercising my brain in a new way, like using my left
hand for a day vs my right. I found it a little harder to maintain the connections between the
generations but it also allowed me to read each conversation with a fresh eye since Yehoshua
provides only glimpses of the past in each conversation.
While Mr. Mani is filled with these intimate stories, Yehoshua gives descriptions of the political
and social backdrops in which they took place. Paramount among these are the ways Jews
existed in these various environments and what their Judaism meant to them. But this is not any
kind of polemic. The story never strays from being about its characters.
I found that Yehoshua's writing was more effective in some chapters than others and I wonder if
it had to do with an easiness about writing in certain time periods more than others. The most
poetic for me was the conversation that occurs in 1918 between two military men--one a
lieutenant prosecuting Joseph Mani and his colonel. The surprise humanity in this chapter adds
to its allure for me.
The one-sided conversation had only one weakness. There were times, not many but enough to
distract me at times, when I became confused trying to fill in the details or meaning of what the
other silent person said. I finished the book feeling as if I had missed something or didn't fully
understand the author's intent. Maybe a second reading would help me to see what I had
missed. But most important is what I gained; an intense interaction with an unusual family and
the environs they made their way in.
Yair Bezalel: At this point I don't know if it's masochism, optimism, or just insanity, but I just
keep reading Yehoshua, an Israeli author whose view on Diaspora Jews and own sense of
entitlement and arrogance are borderline self parody, hoping to find something worthwhile.
In the last book of his I read 'A Woman in Jerusalem' this search, for the most part, paid off.
That book was a mostly subtle and understated work of skill and authorial poise, dancing more
times than not gracefully between the realms of symbolic parable and a realistic collage of life in
the modern Israeli/Jewish state, just about equaling Yehoshua's one other, in my opinion,
masterwork 'The Lover'.
However, whereas in 'A Woman in Jerusalem' the axiom 'less is more' was seemingly the
guiding principle, here in 'Mr. Mani' (apparently Yehoshua's most critically acclaimed novel to
date), the exact opposite technique, that of stuff the novel so damn full that it nearly suffocates
not only the reader but the plot itself at certain moments, is employed and is done so much to
the novel's detriment.
It looked like in writing this Yehoshua was consciously setting out to write his 'big novel'. A
national and cultural as well as historical epic as seen in the events involving and surrounding
an 'ill fated' (as one of the cover blurbs states) Sephardi Jewish family, the eponymous 'Mani'
family. Going further, Yehoshua eschews linearity and decides to tell the story backwards
starting in modern day Israel and ending in Greece at the end of the 1800's. And taking an
additional step (and possibly giving this book the genre classification of 'post modern')
Yehoshua divides the story up into five sections (designated as 'conversations') that are
basically pages and pages long monologues of a single character talking to another, mute,
character, with a few pages before and after the monologues telling the stories of who was
speaking to who and what was to be their eventual fates.
Now granted, this is several boulders worth of literary weight to shoulder and control, let alone
make an effective story out of. And I will grant that Yehoshua certainly shows a hell of a lot of
ambition in this undertaking. But unfortunately despite a promising though vague opening
section, and three solid and at times impressive middle sections, the book is nearly undone by
the fifth and final section of the story where (the problems inherent in the novel from the very
beginning coming to a head) the story descends into what can only be called farcical high camp.
Yehoshua frequently and almost gleefully crosses the line between confidence and arrogance
over the course of the story. It seeps off the pages and from between the words. Where some
sections are written with a true passion and a historian's dedication to rendering details as
astutely as possible, others devolve into pseudo political and, even worse, pseudo philosophical
'navel gazing'. This is no more badly shown then in the book's final conversation where
(SPOILER) the chronologically eldest and first Mani holds forth with a near dead Rabbi whom
he admires. And goes through what can only be described best as 'verbal diarrhea' pouring out
emotion and imagery at a machine gun's pace and with about as much wit and subtlety. When
the final truth of a certain Mani's parentage is revealed I was already mentally (and damn near
literally screaming) I GET IT, OKAY, GET ON WITH IT. You'll have figured it out ten to fifteen
pages within the section and the rest is just crappy melodrama that can be hysterically funny at
times considering how seriously the characters take it.
The story of the Manis, as important as it is to the book as a whole feels oddly under
represented in the text and it seems, undercut by Yehoshua's endless pretensions to post
modern sleights of hand and digressions into (what I imagine he thinks are Faulkner-esque)
detail driven emotionally charged philosophical ramblings that, more than anything else, just left
me saying 'Okay, that was nice, certainly even interesting, but what the hell does it mean and
more importantly what does it do for the story?'.
An at times decent but for the most part (given the mammoth amounts of hype and critical
adoration) disappointing read.
Pamela: definitely a special form of examining experience. Mr. Mani comprises 5 conversations
happening over a span of 130-some years, of which we pay attention just one aspect each one
time. every one dialog relates in a roundabout way to the Sephardic Jewish Mani family. the 1st
is among a twenty-year-old lady and her mother, a kibbutz worker, concerning the daughter's
dating with a tender soldier, Efrayim Mani, through whom she might be pregnant. every one
next dialog happens previous in time, until eventually we succeed in the speaker Avraham Mani,
born in 1799. i am the 1st to respect narrative ambition. nobody had ever written a unique
based really like this one before, I imagine, so why no longer test it? yet my excitement within
the book, which wavered, used to be extra highbrow than full-hearted. There are a few exciting
events (a Nazi soldier assembly his adoptive mom for the 1st time in years; a Jewish soldier in
WWI charged with prosecuting a Jewish secret agent in Palestine), however the hysterical
hectoring of the audio system ("Listen! i am attempting to make you see! the nice half is bobbing
up now!") turns into wearying, and the massive proposal in every one dialog is frequently too
imprecise for me to grasp. or perhaps I DID snatch it, however it struck me as so unimpressive
that i assumed i have to have ignored something.I'm regularly completely satisfied to learn
whatever unusual. possibly it's my very own shallow knowing of the Bible and Israeli
background which are in charge here.
Jim Leffert: In a piece of writing that seemed within the Summer, 2013 factor of The Jewish
evaluation of Books, Alan Mintz means that to get a real knowing of A.B. Yehoshua’s newly
released novel, The Retrospective, one has to have learn Yehoshua’s celebrated novel from
1992, Mr. Mani. Mintz means that those books, including Yehoshua’s really good novel, A trip
to the tip of the Millenium, contain a trilogy in regards to the Sephardic experience. due to the
fact that i discovered The Retrospective to be profitable but additionally a bit puzzling, and
because Alan isn't an individual to Mintz words, I grew to become to Mr. Mani.This is a fancy
ebook that I needed--and desired--to learn twice. In 5 sections, it tells the tale of at the very
least six generations of a Sephardic family, in opposite order, beginning with the 1980’s and
going backwards to the mid-1700’s. each one part takes the shape of 1 character’s facet of a
long dialogue, in order that we in basic terms pay attention what this personality acknowledged
and never how his interlocutor responded. So, we're going backwards in time through a chain of
story-telling monologues from diverse periods. (Do they count number as monologues exactly,
because the different character’s responses have an effect on the character’s unfolding
account of the story? It’s a technical question.) Given the problem of following this multigenerational relations saga instructed in opposite order, you can make a controversy that the
sections of the e-book should be extra simply and simply as aptly learn again to front, that is,
relocating ahead chronologically.Mr. Mani, artfully translated via Hillel Halkin, is an absolutely
learned ancient story approximately contributors of a selected relations with their very own
specific quirks and struggles. it might probably even be visible (and has been by means of a few
people) as a Sephardic counter-narrative to the well known European-centric saga of Zionism.
individuals of the Mani family members lived in Jerusalem in the course of a lot of this period, in
addition to in a Sephardic diaspora along with Athens, Alexandria, Beirut, Constantinople,
Crete, and Salonika—Mediterranean destinations that weren't all that a ways or distant in
tradition from Jerusalem. For a few of the Mani’s, nineteenth and early twentieth century
Jerusalem used to be no longer an idea from psalms, prayers, or manifestos but, rather, their
domestic and backyard. Rooted as they have been in a milieu that introduced them into shut
reference to Arabs and Turks, contributors of the Mani relatives got here to work out themselves
as belonging to a larger, multi-ethnic Levantine community—so a lot in order that one loved one
got here to view the Arabs as “Jews who easily don’t discover but that they're Jews” and for
another, the instant got here while his allegiance to Arabs and Turks exceeded his allegiance to
the British and to ecu Zionists.Mr. Mani’s counter narrative doesn't elide the Holocaust. A new
release of Mani’s, dwelling in Crete, had a detailed and private come across with those
cataclysmic events. However, the Manis’ narrative is become independent from the ecu Jewish
story. It is, indeed, a wealthy ancient story concerning the Sephardic experience.
Elalma: Mi affascina toccando i temi che mi interessano maggiormente. l. a. pace, intesa come
fondamenta di una cultura, l. a. ricerca della propria identità senza disprezzare quella degli altri,
ma cercando anzi quella matrice comune che ci unisce nei secoli. Il tutto ambientato nei paesi
intorno all'"utero azzurro e puro" come Yehoshua definisce il Mediterraneo, l'origine di quella
civiltà, che "non conosce né senso di colpa né paura", quella che abbiamo perduto.
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