This collection of S.Y. Agnon's short stories, published in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his Nobel Prize in Literature, surveys the major theme in his writing: the epic transformations in the life of the Jewish people both in Europe and in the Land of Israel. In new and revised translations, these 39 fully annotated stories bring to life the full gamut of the modern Jewish experience in fiction, and invite readers into the rich and brilliantly multifaceted world of one of the great writers of the last century. Includes Agnon's 1966 speech to the Royal Swedish Academy on the occasion of his receipt of the Nobel Prize, the first and only Hebrew author so decorated. Agnon declared before the King of Sweden and the other assembled dignitaries: "As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem."