Of the vast amount of critical commentary that followed publication of A. B. Yehoshua's latest work, The Lover, the majority dealt not so much with the literary merit of the work, or with any great truths it might have revealed, as with its political and social implications.

Increasingly Yehoshua's writing focuses on situations in Israeli life; it might appear that he is becoming increasingly parochial. But as with others, so with him: the situations he chooses revolve around certain recurring themes—universal human themes—and it is they that constitute the essential Yehoshua.

These themes were evident even in his first published work, The Death of the Old Man, a collection of short parable-like stories showing the influence both of Agnon and Kafka. The stories are symbolic in style, and, contrary to his later work, rooted in no particular place and no particular time.

In the first of...