SOURCE: Mintz, Alan L. “Agnon without End.” Commentary 89, no. 2 (February 1990): 57-9.

In the following review of the English translation of Shira, Mintz states that the novel portrays the end of the liberal German-Jewish world view.

The translation for the first time of a major work by S. Y. Agnon (1888-1970), the greatest writer in modern Hebrew, is sufficient cause for celebration; the fact that this work is a novel makes the event that much more interesting, but also more equivocal.

Agnon, who was born and brought up in Eastern Europe and moved to Palestine for the first time in 1907, most naturally displayed his narrative genius—and gained his early fame—in short fictions which made ironic use of two traditional Hebrew forms, the midrashic vignette and the hasidic tale. When it came to writing novels, Agnon similarly constructed them by stringing together cycles of related stories. This resulted...