A Book that Was Lost

About the Author

S.Y. Agnon was born Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia. In 1908 he immigrated to Ottoman Palestine, there to publish his first story, “Agunot,” (“Forsaken Wives”), under the pen name “Agnon”—a surname he later adopted legally. After an extended stay in Germany from 1913 to 1924, he returned to Jerusalem, where he remained until his death in 1970.

Called “a man of unquestionable genius” and “one of the great storytellers of our time,” S.Y. Agnon is among the most effusively praised and widely translated of Hebrew authors. Extolled for the uniqueness of his style and the beauty of his language, as well as his comic mastery, Agnon’s contribution to the renewal of Hebrew literature has been seminal for all subsequent Israeli writing. While much of his work attempts to recapture the lives and traditions of a former time, his stories are never a simple act of preservation, but rather deal with the most important psychological and philosophical problems of his generation, touching on the spiritual desolation of a world standing on the threshold of a new age.

The winner of numerous Israeli prizes (Bialik Prize, 1934 and 1950; Israel Prize, 1954 and 1958), Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966.