Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888–1970)

Shmuel Yosef Agnon, known in English as S.Y. Agnon, was born in Galicia (now part of Ukraine) and emigrated to Palestine in 1908. He spent the years 1913 through 1924 in Germany, where he met and married Esther Marx, with whom he had two children. In 1924, he brought his family to Jerusalem, where he lived for the rest of his life. A prolific novelist and short-story writer from an early age, Agnon received numerous awards for his work, including the Nobel Prize for Literature (shared with Nelly Sachs) in 1966 and the Israel Prize on two occasions. He is often cited as one of the great storytellers of our time and for his wit and comic mastery. Agnon is among the most widely-written about and widely-translated of all Hebrew authors. His style and language influenced today's generation of writers. In much of his work, Agnon tried to recapture the lives and traditions of Jews of a former time, and often dealt with important psychological and philosophical questions. After his death in 1970, his daughter Emuna Yaron continued to publish his work posthumously.