To This Day

To This Day, one of Agnon’s last novels (first published in Hebrew in 1952), is also his last to be translated into English. It is a brilliantly accomplished and haunting work. On the surface it is a comically entertaining tale of a young writer—a Galician Jew who has lived in Palestine, and returns to Europe on the eve of World War I, to get stranded in Berlin, a city with severe wartime shortages. On a deeper level it is a profound commentary on exile, Zionism, divine providence, human egoism, and other typically Agnonian concerns.