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Three writers carried Israeli prose from the post-1967 generation into world literature: A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, David Grossman. They overlapped politically (peace camp, Oslo signatories, Two-State advocates), formally (each pushed the Israeli novel into modernist territory, multiple narrators, fragmented time, mythic structure), and personally (close friends for decades). Around them: Aharon Appelfeld writing the Holocaust in spare Hebrew, Meir Shalev grounding fiction in Jezreel Valley earth, and Etgar Keret breaking the form open for the post-1990s generation. This is the canon, and its inheritors.
Cultural note, The three men appeared together in public for decades, at protests, at peace rallies, at literary panels. When Oz died in December 2018, Yehoshua and Grossman gave eulogies. When Yehoshua died in June 2022, Grossman wrote that "an entire library has gone silent." Israeli literature is small enough that the canon was three friends. Read at least one novel from each before making aliyah, you will hear them quoted, argued with, and grieved over.
A.B. Yehoshua Major Works
Amos Oz Major Works
David Grossman Major Works
Aharon Appelfeld & Meir Shalev
Etgar Keret & Younger Generation
The Big Three: A Conversation in a Tel Aviv Café
Two friends, a literature student and a retired teacher, discuss the Big Three on a Friday afternoon at Café Tamar.