Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon is considered the towering figure of modern Hebrew literature. With this collection of stories, reissued in paperback and expanded to include additional Agnon classics, the English-speaking audience has, at long last, access to the rich and brilliantly multifaceted fictional world of one of the greatest writers of the last century. This broad selection of Agnon's fiction introduces the full sweep of the writer's panoramic vision as chonicler of the lost world of Eastern European Jewry and the emerging society of modern Israel. New Reader's Preface by Jonathan Rosen.