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
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... hands, for the Zionists' “pushing the end”—thus, the impasse is given, no matter what end it may take. Furthermore ... hand, it is a plot of character and destiny (or, perhaps preferably: character that is destiny), a dramatic-tragical ...
... hand had mended them. If Simon had been blessed with wealth, he would have provided wedding garments for his son, but now he wasn't blessed, he provided him with supplies for the road. And he took a pillow and a featherbed from his ...
... hands, you're already in their hands. Isaac neither rejoiced with the rejoicers nor grieved with the grievers. Those businesses brought about by Exile were not worth either rejoicing or grieving about. Isaac had already shaken them off ...
... hand his sack and in the other hand his valise. The sweetsun he left three days ago in his hometown had grown old before its time. Spring it was when Isaac left his hometown and here it is summer. Endless sweat drips from his forehead ...
... hand so the old man wouldn't notice anything. Indeed, he could have taken the bread and the old man wouldn't have ... hands went slack and he couldn't stretch them out. And he returned from the old man with his soul much hungrier. So he ...