Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1887–1970) is the most significant of Hebrew writers in recent times, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1966. The book unfolds the story of Agnon's life and provides an overview of his work at different stages of the writer's life and creative path: Eastern Galicia—the region where Agnon was born and raised, the State of Israel (and especially Jerusalem), where the writer lived most of his life, and Germany, where he made an intermediate stop that lasted for 12 years. As a person whose roots go deep into the world of Judaism in Eastern Europe and Jewish traditions, but also as an artist sensitive to the changing Jewish reality, in his works, Agnon reveals the tension and polarization that permeate the modern Jewish existential experience, characterized by dramatic processes of changes and crises. Agnon, with his immense literary talent and unmatched refined style, gifted us with numerous masterpieces throughout his sixty years of creativity, the most outstanding novels in Hebrew literature of the 20th century, as well as a priceless corpus of anthologies and collections of excerpts from Jewish sources. While simultaneously examining the life and work of the writer, this book offers the reader—including foreigners—the opportunity to delve into the depths of the writer's inner world, who occupies such a prominent place in the history of Hebrew literature, Jewish culture in general, and modern Israeli culture in particular.