Only Yesterday

First edition in English. Royal 8vo. Pp. xxxii, 652. Moss-green buckram, stamped in gilt to spine; deckled fore-edges. Jacket design by Tracy Baldwin, featuring detail of Reuven Rubin's oil on canvas, Pinwheel Vendor (1923–25), Rubin Museum, Tel Aviv. Pine-green endpapers. Translator's Note. Glossary. Introduction by Benjamin Harshav.

Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav.

Originally published in 1945, Agnon's masterpiece is set during the Second Aliya (1904–14), when several hundred Jewish idealists fleeing the Russian Empire pogroms, settled in Palestine in an attempt to revive Hebrew culture.

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people," an honour he shared in 1966 with the poet, Nelly Sachs. On accepting the award, Agnon, born into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, claimed he always regarded himself as Jerusalem-born, where, after many peregrinations, he eventually settled. His growing fame was such, that when he raised a complaint with the mayor's office about traffic noise levels outside his study, the city closed the street to cars and posted a sign reading: "No entry to all vehicles, writer at work!" "For this miracle of a translation, which brings Agnon's original Hebrew vividly to life, we can only be grateful." –Washington Post