A Book that Was Lost

Literature & Fiction

Agnon, Shmuel Yosef

Short Stories & Anthologies

Random House Value Publishing

Twenty-one stories;

Gollancz

Days of Awe

Schocken

The Bridal Canopy, Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon's mock epic novel, is an elaborate frame story encompassing dozens of Hassidic tales. Set in early nineteenth-century Galicia,the plot is part quest, part comedy of errors,progressively departing from its opening tone of realism. The narrative is decisively double-edged: naïve, in the manner of classic folk tales, as well as sophisticated and artful, as a modern work. The Bridal Canopy parodies the Hassidic folk tale, but does so very delicately; it censures without acrimony, always maintaining an air of reverence for the Old World. Unlike other depictions of Eastern European Jewry's shtetl life, the story is sufficiently subtle to support divergent readings and that is clearly part of Agnon's accomplishment. Other Hebrew- or Yiddish-language authors who portray this period level their criticism much closer to the surface. Agnon is responding to that kind of corrosive construction when he creates Reb Yudel, and is in dialogue with those authors of the generation preceding his own. Our author's portrayal is not without bite, but it is drawn with a far gentler hand. Agnon always sees with a kind of double vision: simultaneously nostalgic for and critical of the Old World, neither a shill for tradition, nor attempting to undermine it. Adoration, or, alternatively, satirization of a worldview does not indicate, in and of itself, an author's stance vis-à-vis that worldview. For Agnon, the situation is not one of either/or: he desires to simultaneously skewer and sacralize. In so doing, he asks what the past can offer the present and the future. And by posing such a question, Agnon invites his readers to consider their own destinations, despite the fact that his characters are not always able to make that journey forward.With a new Foreword by Jeffrey Saks.

Bridal Canopy

History & Criticism

A Guest for the Night (first published in 1939 as Germany invaded Poland) is Agnon's depiction of how all modern movements aside from Zionism secularism, Haskalah, socialism, communism failed to provide a viable alternative to traditional life. But, he is clear, even traditional life was untenable, because it all fell apart from within before the first furnaces were ignited in Auschwitz. Even the Guest's well-intentioned attempt to revivify and to re-engage the lost world of piety is also doomed. The Alte Heim, the old home, can no longer exist it is a place where we can only be passing guests for the night. Therefore you can't go home again, but not for the reasons that Thomas Wolfe suggests; rather, because home no longer exists. It has to be rebuilt, but it can only be rebuilt in the Bayit Hadash, in the new home in the Land of Israel. This is Agnon's greatest theme in the novel and, in differing ways, throughout his body of writing: The idea that modern man, modern Jews, are alienated from their spiritual home. While we can't go home again, that doesn't mean we can't move forward through conceiving of a new home although doing so comes with the great danger of being caught in the disconnect between the old and the new, between what was and what might be.Translated by Misha Louvish, with a new Foreword by Jeffrey Saks.

Guest for the Night

Literary

Stories set in modern Jaffa and Jerusalem deal with psychological dilemmas of Jewish life

Two Tales

When a young girl loses her parents and comes to live as a maid at the home of her wealthy relatives, she triggers a complex series of events in the life of Hirshl Hurvitz, her young cousin, who falls in love with her

Simple Story

Classics

Compiled by S.Y. Agnon, one of the greatest Hebrew writers of the twentieth century and winner of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature, Days of Awe is the long-acknowledged classic companion to the High Holy Days prayerbook. Here in one volume are readings from the meditations from the Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Zohar, to deepen the spiritual experience of the holiest days of the Jewish year. More than three hundred texts. selected from the vast storehouse of Jewish literature from ancient to modern times, are arranged to follow the order of the synagogue service for the High Holy Days. "From the moment of its appearance," writes Judah Goldin in the Introduction, "[this] volume seemed as though it had always been here, as though it had always been the companion of the holiday prayerbook."

Days of Awe: A Treasury of Jewish Wisdom for Reflection, Repentance, and Renewal on the High Holy Days

History

World

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Stories depict the culture of traditional Jewish life in Poland, the lost world of Eastern European Jewry, and the emerging society of modern Israel

A Book that Was Lost: and Other Stories

Contemporary

Hailed as one of Agnonâ€™s most significant works, A Guest for the Night depicts Jewish life in Eastern Europe after World War I. A man journeys from Israel to his hometown in Europe, saddened to find so many friends taken by war, pogrom, or disease. In this vanishing world of traditional values, he confronts the loss of faith and trust of a younger generation. This 1939 novel reveals Agnonâ€™s vision of his peopleâ€™s past, tragic present, and hope for the future. Cited by National Yiddish Book Center as one of "The Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature" The Wisconsin edition is not for sale in the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, or the traditional British Commonwealth (excluding Canada.)

A Guest for the Night (English and Hebrew Edition)

Schocken Books

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Books by Agnon, Shmuel Yosef