Literatureשמואל יוסף עגנון

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was a Hebrew novelist, poet and short story writer who shared the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature.

1887 to 1970The 1966 Nobel Prize in LiteratureModern Hebrew fictionThe novella "Agunot"The novel Hakhnasat Kalla

Born: 8 August 1887, Buchach
Died: 17 February 1970, Jerusalem
Occupation: writer, novelist, poet, short story writer

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was born in 1887 in Buchach

Agnon was born Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes in 1887 in Buczacz, a town in Eastern Galicia then ruled by Austria-Hungary. He was the eldest child of a traditional family, and his father was a Hasid. He studied in cheder from age 3 and later learned Talmud and Maimonides with his father.

He started writing as a boy and published poems and stories in Hebrew and Yiddish from 1903. In 1908 he moved to Jaffa and settled in Neve Tzedek. His story "Agunot" appeared there in October 1908, and its title gave him the pen name Agnon, which later became his legal surname.

In 1912 he left for Berlin with Arthur Ruppin and stayed in Germany for 12 years. There he grew close to Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem, and Salman Schocken became his patron. He married Esther Marx in 1920, and in 1924 a fire at his home in Bad Homburg destroyed his library and manuscripts.

Later in 1924 he settled in Jerusalem for good and returned to religious life. His house in Talpiot was looted in the 1929 riots. Schocken founded a publishing house for his works, and his collected stories came out in 4 volumes in 1931.

He received the Bialik Prize and the Israel Prize twice each, and in 1966 shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with Nelly Sachs. He died in Jerusalem in 1970.