Only Yesterday: A NovelPrinceton University Press, 2019 M02 26 - 696 pages When Israeli Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon published the novel Only Yesterday in 1945, it quickly became recognized as a major work of world literature, not only for its vivid historical reconstruction of Israel's founding society. The book tells a seemingly simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya--the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. This epic novel also engages the reader in a fascinating network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes all leading to the question, what, if anything, controls human existence? |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 82
... drink of water—Rebecca from a well, Shifra from a glass: “A beautiful and pious lass entered and brought water and jam. She poured water for Isaac in a clean glass and said, May the gentleman please savor it.” “God created one thing ...
... drink a cup of coffee. They treated him to coffee with cream that cost fourteen Kreutzers, and cake that also cost fourteen Kreutzers, which is twenty-eight Kreutzers, which is one thirteenth of the price of 12 Prologue.
... drink, because he had been so eager to see them that he had forgotten to eat and he was hungry. Yet our comrade Isaac didn't disgrace us, and didn't drink more than one glass, and didn't eat more than one piece of pastry, even though he ...
... drink a toast and converse pleasantly with one another like well-mannered people. The train makes another stop, and broad-shouldered men with thick sidelocks and wide belts come in. No sooner did they put their belongings down than they ...
... drink all the days of his journey. And Isaac was not ungrateful to his benefactor and gave him a gift of a vest of hides that you wear in winter over a shirt and under a coat. It was the garment Father had given him before he set out on ...