Five conversations, each centring on the fate of a different member of the Sephardi Mani family, make up this profound, far-reaching and passionate Mediterranean novel which tells of six generations of the family, but in reverse chronology. In each conversation the responses of one person are absent, thus drawing in the reader as the story reaches back into the past, creating one of the most extraordinary reading experiences in modern literature. On a kibbutz in the Negev in 1982, a student tells her mother about her strange meeting in Jerusalem with Judge Gavriel Mani, the father of her boyfriend whose child she is expecting. On the occupied island of Crete in 1944, a German soldier relates to his adoptive grandmother his experiences there with the Mani family, whom he hunts down. In Jerusalem, occupied by the British in 1918, a young Jewish lawyer serving with the British army briefs his commanding officer on the forthcoming trial for treason of the political agitator Yosef Mani. In a village in southern Poland in 1899, a young doctor reports to his father his experiences at the Third Zionist Congress and his subsequent trip to Jerusalem with his sister, who falls in love with Dr Moshe Mani, an obstetrician. In Athens, in 1848, Avraham Mani reports to his elderly mentor the intricate tale of his trip to Jerusalem and the death there of his young son. ''Mr Mani is conceived on an epic scale as a hymn to the continuity of Jewish life. This formulation sounds pat and sentimental, but Yehoshua''s achievement is the opposite: it always suggests even more complex worlds beyond the vignettes of which the novel is composed. ''Stephen Brook, New Statesman and Society ''Suffused with sensuous receptiveness to Jerusalem -its coppery light, its pungent smells, its babble of tongues, its vistas crumbling with history -Yehoshua''s minutely researched novel ramifies out from the city to record the rich and wretched elements that have gone into the founding and continuation of the nation whose centre it has once again become. ''Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times ''Adjectives come racing to mind to describe Mr Mani, for instance ''rich, complex, exotic, creative, informative'', but ''easy'' is one that does not fit. On finishing it, this reader had the reaction that he had to turn back to the beginning in order to grasp more firmly the sources of his admiration...It is extraordinarily skilful to have captured the Jewish mixture of suffering and revival, despair and messianic hope, without in any way spelling out such heavy themes. ''David Pryce-Jones, The Financial Times ''A.B. Yehoshua has created a historical and psychological universe -nearly biblical in the range and penetration of its enchanting ''begats'' -with an amazingly real Jerusalem at its centre. It is as if the blood-pulse of this ingeniously inventive novel had somehow fused with the hurtling vision of the generations of Genesis. With Mr. Mani, Yehoshua once again confirms his sovereign artistry; and Hillel Halkin''s translation has a brilliant and spooky life of its own. ''Cynthia Ozick
