A Simple Story (Library of Modern Jewish Literature) - Softcover

Agnon, Shmuel Yosef

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815606184 ISBN 13: 9780815606185

Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr, 1999

Synopsis

A small town in southern Poland is the scene of this bittersweet romance set at the turn of the century. Celebrated Israeli novelist, S. Y. Agnon draws on techniques perfected by Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Mann to contrast the hero's romantic longings with the interests in bourgeois society.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Hebrew

From Publishers Weekly

The appearance in translation of a novel by a Nobel Laureate is cause for rejoicing, even when it sits less comfortably in English than in the original Hebrew. A story of a marriage, it takes place in Szybusz, a fictional town in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Blume Nacht, after her mother's death, becomes a servant in the house of cousins, whose son Hirshl falls in love with her. Blume, beautiful and almost superhumanly capable, repudiates Hirshl, a bit of a simpleton. He, when pressed by his substantial parents, slips bewilderedly into marriage with Mina, a heavily cologned boarding-school graduate. Blume meanwhile moves to another household and is rarely seen again, leaving the reader's expectations unfulfilled. Hirshl's too, for she is ever-present in his heart, stunting his sexual relationship with Mina and driving him from melancholy to madness. That he recovers, returns to his wife, and begins to find in what had been an emptyheaded, passive girl robust sensuality and social understanding, seems to reflect his emerging maturity and acceptance of the bourgeois solidity represented by his parents and the town itself. Agnon's achievement is to have combined gentle mockery of the myriad characters he brings so engagingly to life with staunch championing of values and customs that were soon to be doomed. His scholarship and literary astuteness inform a story that is at once rich in biblical allusion and redolent of the society in which he was raised. December
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Edition details

• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815606184
• ISBN 13: 9780815606185
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 246