Only Yesterday (Paperback, Revised)

One of Israel's most important writers, Agnon was born in eastern Galicia and moved to Palestine in 1908 as part of the Second Aliya, or return to the Holy Land. This book, originally published in 1945, is the tale of Isaac, a Polish idealist who comes to Palestine on the Second Aliya, filled with hope, enthusiasm and a determination to revive Hebrew culture. But his life does not go according to plan and idealogy proves hard to maintain in the face of competing claims of capitalism, religion and sexuality. When Isaac writes the words 'crazy dog' on a stray dog's back, the dog's story takes over, as he roams the streets causing panic. But what does he really represent? A powerful exploration of an individual's and a people's struggle to find their place in the world, which examines the most fundamental questions of human existence. (Kirkus UK)

Israeli Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon's famous masterpiece, his novel "Only Yesterday," here appears in English translation for the first time. Published in 1945, 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. "Only Yesterday" quickly became recognized as a monumental work of world literature, but not only for its vivid historical reconstruction of Israel's founding society. 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?

Seduced by Zionist slogans, young Isaac Kumer imagines the Land of Israel filled with the financial, social, and erotic opportunities that were denied him, the son of an impoverished shopkeeper, in Poland. Once there, he cannot find the agricultural work he anticipated. Instead Isaac happens upon house-painting jobs as he moves from secular, Zionist Jaffa, where the ideological fervor and sexual freedom are alien to him, to ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist Jerusalem. While some of his Zionist friends turn capitalist, becoming successful merchants, his own life remains adrift and impoverished in a land torn between idealism and practicality, a place that is at once homeland and diaspora. Eventually he marries a religious woman in Jerusalem, after his worldly girlfriend in Jaffa rejects him.

Led astray by circumstances, Isaac always ends up in the place opposite of where he wants to be, but why? The text soars to Surrealist-Kafkaesque dimensions when, in a playful mode, Isaac drips paint on a stray dog, writing "Crazy Dog" on his back. Causing panic wherever he roams, the dog takes over the story, until, after enduring persecution for so long without "understanding" why, he really does go mad and bites Isaac. The dog has been interpreted as everything from the embodiment of Exile to a daemonic force, and becomes an unforgettable character in a book about the death of God, the deception of discourse, the power of suppressed eroticism, and the destiny of a people depicted in all its darkness and promise.

General

Imprint:	Princeton University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	March 2002
First published:	March 2002
Authors:	S.Y. Agnon
Translators:	Barbara Harshav
Dimensions:	235 x 152 x 42mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	688
Edition:	Revised
ISBN-13:	978-0-691-09544-8
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-691-09544-2
Barcode:	9780691095448

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