Volume 37, Number 5 · March 29, 1990
Great-Uncle
By Gabriele Annan
Shira
by S. Y. Agnon, translated by Zeva Shapiro
Schocken, 585 pp., $24.95
S. Y. Agnon is one of the fathers of modern Hebrew fiction. Born in Galicia in 1888, he went to live in Palestine in 1907. Between 1913 and 1924 he was in Germany. Then he returned to Palestine/Israel, where he died in 1970. His huge novel Shira was unfinished, but he wanted it to be published after his death. He had begun it in the 1940s, and several portions had appeared as work in progress. This is the first English translation, and it consists of four books, with two alternative final chapters: one seems to fit on to Book Three, the other on Book Four. 'The text,' Robert Alter says in his afterword, 'is unstable.'
Review, 2846 words
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