A Book That Was Lost and Other Stories
By S. Y. Agnon
Edited by Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman
(436 Pages)Publisher: Schocken Books, 1995
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, S. Y. Agnon is considered the towering genius of modern Hebrew literature for his hard-edged modernism and soft-hued imagery. With this collection of stories, the English-speaking audience has, at long last, access to the rich and brilliantly multifaceted fictional world of one of the great writers of this century.
This broad selection of Agnon's fiction introduces the full sweep of the writer's panoramic vision as chronicler of the lost world of Eastern European Jewry and the emerging society of modern Israel. Here are stories that portray the richly textured culture of traditional Jewish life in Poland, as well as changes in the life of the community over time.