AKA Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes

Born: 17-Jul-1888
Birthplace: Buchach, Ukraine
Died: 17-Feb-1970
Location of death: Rehovot, Israel
Cause of death: Heart Failure
Remains: Buried, Mount of Olives Cemetery, Jerusalem, Israel

Gender: Male
Religion: Jewish
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Author

Nationality: Israel
Executive summary: 'Tmol Shilshom

Shmuel Agnon (pronounced shmoo-el ahg-nohn) was born in Eastern Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary, now in the Ukraine. He wrote his first poem at five years of age, a song of lament for his father, who was away on a business trip. His first story was published at 15. He wrote almost exclusively in Hebrew, with Yiddish flourishes, and thematically he often returned to the conflict between traditional Jewish ways and modern Jewish life, and Kafkaesque tales of Jews wandering without a homeland.

He adopted his pen name when he moved to Palestine in 1908, and made it his legal name in 1924. He lived in Germany for a decade, where he married his wife and established the Zionist journal Der Jude (The Jew), with the financial backing of his patron, Salman Schocken, a German Jewish department store magnate who later owned the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. Agnon's best-known novel is 'Tmol Shilshom, about Jews emigrating from to Palestine, published in English as Only Yesterday or The Day before Yesterday. In 1966 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, sharing the award with Sweden's Nelly Sachs.

Father: Shalom Mordechai Halevy (fur trader)
Wife: Esther Marx (m. 1920)

    Nobel Prize for Literature 1966 (with Nelly Sachs)
    Portrait on Israeli Currency 50 shekel
    German Ancestry Maternal
    Jewish Ancestry
    Polish Ancestry
    Ukrainian Ancestry

Author of books:
At the Handles of the Lock (1923, short stories)
Sefer Hamaasim (The Book of Deeds) (1932)
Pat Shlema (A Whole Loaf) (1933)
Yamin Noraim (Days of Awe) (1938, short stories)
Oreach Nata Lalun (A Guest for the Night) (1939)
Shevuat Emunim (Two Tales) (1943)
'Tmol Shilshom (Only Yesterday) (1945)
Atem Reitem (Ye Have Seen) (1959, non-fiction)
Sifreihem Shel Tzadikim (Books of the Tzadikim) (1961, non-fiction)
Agunot (Forsaken Wives) (1908)
Hakhnasat Kalah (The Bridal Canopy) (1919, two volumes)
Ore'ah Nata' Lalun (A Guest for the Night) (1938)
Sefer, Sofer, Vesipur (1938, Rabbinic texts)
Present at Sinai: The Giving of the Law (1959, non-fiction)
21 Stories (1970, short stories)
Shira (1971, published posthumously)
A Book That Was Lost and Other Stories (1995, short stories, published posthumously)
Jaffa, Belle of the Seas (1998, short stories, published posthumously)
A City and the Fullness Thereof (1973, short stories, published posthumously)
In Mr. Lublin's Shop (1974, short stories, published posthumously)
Within the Wall (1975, short stories, published posthumously)
From Myself to Myself (1976, non-fiction, published posthumously)
Introductions (1977, short stories, published posthumously)
Yiddish Works (1977, short stories and poems, published posthumously)
Book, Writer and Story (1978, non-fiction, published posthumously)
The Beams of Our House (1979, two novellas, published posthmously)
Dear Esther: Letters 1924-1931 (1983, collected letters, published posthumously)
A Shroud of Stories (1985, short stories, published posthumously)
The Correspondence between S.Y. Agnon and Z. Schocken (1991, collected letters, published posthumously)

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