Twenty One Stories

Plot

In the sh ort stories, content and form, theme and style alike convey the message of enigma and paradox, and of goals perceived, intuited, but rarely if ever reached. Home is no longer a natural, secure encosure for a man and his kin; such security is but a faint hope. Time is no onger a reliable measurement of past, present, and futer; man is lost in the whirl of disconnected mmoments. The first four stories of the selection present his ealirer style where the Jewish traditional background predominates. In the rest of the sotires Agnon speaks as a highly modern writer concerned with the issue that beser, burden, and provoke contemporary men.