Only Yesterday / Selected Stories

Shmuel Yosef Agnon shared the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, recognized as the foremost master of modern Hebrew fiction. His novels and stories trace the journey from the traditional Jewish world of Galicia to the emerging society of Palestine, rendering the tensions between old and new with psychological subtlety and narrative sophistication. Agnon's work occupies a unique position at the crossroads of European literary modernism and the revival of Hebrew as a living literary language.

Agnon's fiction is deeply embedded in the history of the Zionist movement and the broader revival of Hebrew literature in the twentieth century. His narratives capture the dislocations of migration, the weight of religious tradition, and the aspirations of a people building a new national identity in the land of Israel.