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 through time and is told in five conversations about the Mani family. It ends in Athens in 1848 with Avraham Mani’s powerful tale about the death of his young son in Jerusalem.　A profoundly human novel, rich in drama, irony, and wit. A. B. Yehoshua (1936-2022) was born in Jerusalem to a Sephardi family. Drawing comparisons to William Faulkner and described by Saul Bellow as “one of Israel's world-class writers,” Yehoshua, an ardent humanist and titan of storytelling, distinguished himself from contemporaries with his diverse exploration of Israeli identity. His work, which has been translated into twenty-eight languages, includes two National Jewish Book Award winners ( Five Seasons  and  Mr. Mani ) and has received countless honors worldwide, including the International Booker Prize shortlist and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize ( Woman in Jerusalem ). Mr. Mani By A. B. Yehoshua, Hillel Halkin Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 1989 A. B. Yehoshua All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-15-662769-6 Contents Title Page, Table of Contents, Copyright, Dedication, The Conversation Partners, FIRST CONVERSATION, The Conversation Partners, Biographical, SECOND CONVERSATION, The Conversation Partners, Biographical, THIRD CONVERSATION, The Conversation Partners, Biographical, FOURTH CONVERSATION, The Conversation Partners, Biographical, FIFTH CONVERSATION, The Conversation Partners, Biographical, The Manis, Read More from A. B. Yehoshua, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 FIRST CONVERSATION Mash'abei Sadeh 7 P.M Friday, December 31, 1982 The Conversation Partners HAGAR SHILOH Born in 1962 in Mash'abei Sadeh, a kibbutz thirty kilometers south of Beersheba that was founded in 1949. Her parents, Roni and Ya'el Shiloh, first arrived there in 1956 in the course of their army service. Hagar's father Roni was killed on the last day of the Six Day War as a reservist on the Golan Heights. As Hagar was five at the time, her claim to have clear memories of her father may well have been correct. Hagar attended a regional high school in the nearby kibbutz of Revivim and finished her last year there without taking two of her matriculation exams, English and history. She began her army service in August 1980 and served as a noncommissioned counseling officer with a paratroop unit stationed in central Israel. Because her base was far from her kibbutz, she spent many of her short leaves in Tel Aviv, where she stayed with her paternal grandmother Naomi. She was very attached to this grandmother, from whom she liked to coax stories of her father's childhood. The old woman, who enjoyed her granddaughter's lively presence, sought repeatedly to persuade her to register at the University of Tel Aviv after the army. And indeed, upon finishing her military service, the last months of which were highly eventful because of the outbreak of the war in Lebanon in 1982, Hagar flouted the wishes of her mother, who wanted her to return home for at least a year before beginning her higher education, and persuaded a general meeting of the kibbutz to allow her to continue her studies. This decision was facilitated by the fact that, as the daughter of a fallen soldier, Hagar stood to have her tuition fully paid for by the ministry of defense. Hagar hoped to study film at Tel Aviv University. However, lacking a high school diploma, she was not accepted as a fully matriculated student and was first required to register for a yearlong course to prepare her for the exams she had missed. She was also asked to take courses in Hebrew and mathematics to upgrade her academic record. In early December of that year, at the urging of her son Ben-Zion Shiloh, Hagar's uncle and the Israeli consul in Marseilles, Naomi decided to take a trip to France. In effect this was in place of her son's intended visit to Israel the previous summer, which was canceled when the consulate was forced to work overtime to present Israel's case in the Lebanese war. Although loathe to leave her beloved granddaughter for so long, she could not refuse her only son, a forty-year-old bachelor whose single state worried her greatly. Indeed, she was so determined to help find him a suitable match that she stayed longer than she had planned in order to attend the various New Year's receptions given by the consulate. Hagar, a short, graceful young woman with the dark red hair of her late father, looked forward greatly to having her grandmother's large, attractive apartment to herself. At first she thought of asking her friend Irees, whom she had met at the university, to stay with her. Irees's father had also been killed in battle, in the Yom Kippur War, and she had an amazing knowledge of the various benefits