Misplaced Pages

Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Agnon in 1966
Born	Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes (1887-08-08)August 8, 1887 Buczacz, Polish Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Buchach, Ukraine)
Died	February 17, 1970(1970-02-17) (aged 82) Jerusalem, Israel
Resting place	Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery
Occupation	Novelist, poet, short-story writer
Language	Hebrew
Nationality	Israeli
Genre	Novels
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature 1966
Spouse	Esther Marx

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון; August 8, 1887 – February 17, 1970) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon (ש"י עגנון‎). In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.

Agnon was born in Polish Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, and died in Jerusalem.

His works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world. They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions of the European shtetl (village). In a wider context, he also contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrator's role in literature. Agnon had a distinctive linguistic style, mixing modern and rabbinic Hebrew.

In 1966, he shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with the poet Nelly Sachs.

Biography

Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes (later Agnon) was born in Buczacz (Polish spelling, pronounced Buchach, Butschatsch in German), Polish Galicia (then within the Austro-Hungarian Empire), now Buchach, Ukraine. Officially, his date of birth in the Hebrew calendar was 18 Av 5648 (July 26), but he always said his birthday was on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av.

His father, Shalom Mordechai Halevy, was ordained as a rabbi, but worked in the fur trade, and had many connections among the Hasidim. His mother's side had ties to the Mitnagdim.

He did not attend school and was schooled by his parents. In addition to studying Jewish texts, Agnon studied writings of the Haskalah, and was also tutored in German. At the age of eight, he began to write in Hebrew and Yiddish, At the age of 15, he published his first poem – a Yiddish poem about the Kabbalist Joseph della Reina. He continued to write poems and stories in Hebrew and Yiddish, which were published in Galicia.

In 1908, he moved to Jaffa in Ottoman Palestine. The first story he published there was "Agunot" ("Chained Wives"), which appeared that same year in the journal Ha`omer. He used the pen name "Agnon", derived from the title of the story, which he adopted as his official surname in 1924. In 1910, "Forsaken Wives" was translated into German. In 1912, at the urging of Yosef Haim Brenner, he published a novella, "Vehaya Ha'akov Lemishor" ("The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight").

In 1913, Agnon moved to Germany, where he met Esther Marx (1889-1973), the sister of Alexander Marx. They married in 1920 and had two children. In Germany he lived in Berlin and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe (1921–24). Salman Schocken, a businessman and later also publisher, became his literary patron and freed him from financial worries. From 1931 on, his work was published by Schocken Books, and his short stories appeared regularly in the newspaper Haaretz, also owned by the Schocken family. In Germany, he continued to write short stories and collaborated with Martin Buber on an anthology of Hasidic stories. Many of his early books appeared in Buber's Jüdischer Verlag (Berlin). The mostly assimilated, secular German Jews, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig among them, considered Agnon to be a legitimate relic, being a religious man, familiar with Jewish scripture. Gershom Scholem called him "the Jews' Jew".

In 1924, a fire broke out in his home, destroying his manuscripts and rare book collection. This traumatic event crops up occasionally in his stories. Later that year, Agnon returned to Palestine and settled with his family in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot. In 1929, his library was destroyed again during anti-Jewish riots.

When his novel Hachnasat Kalla ("The Bridal Canopy") appeared in 1931 to great critical acclaim, Agnon's place in Hebrew literature was assured. In 1935, he published Sippur Pashut ("A Simple Story"), a novella set in Buchach at the end of the 19th century. Another novel, Tmol Shilshom ("Only Yesterday"), set in Eretz Yisrael (Israel) of the early 20th century, appeared in 1945.

Agnon was a strict vegetarian in his personal life.

During much of the 20th century, there was debate about whether Agnon or Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog was the true author of the Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel in 1948. Herzog was generally considered the author until a 1983 article in Ma'ariv by scholar David Tamar raised the possibility of Agnon's authorship. However, findings by scholar Yoel Rappel and corroborated by the National Library of Israel in 2018 confirmed Herzog's authorship, but confirmed that Agnon had edited the work.

Literary themes and influences

Agnon's writing has been the subject of extensive academic research. Many leading scholars of Hebrew literature have published books and papers on his work, among them Baruch Kurzweil, Dov Sadan, Nitza Ben-Dov, Dan Miron, Dan Laor and Alan Mintz. Agnon writes about Jewish life, but with his own unique perspective and special touch. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Agnon claimed "Some see in my books the influences of authors whose names, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while others see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writings I have not read." He went on to detail that his primary influences were the stories of the Bible. Agnon acknowledged that he was also influenced by German literature and culture, and European literature in general, which he read in German translation. A collection of essays on this subject, edited in part by Hillel Weiss, with contributions from Israeli and German scholars, was published in 2010: Agnon and Germany: The Presence of the German World in the Writings of S.Y. Agnon. The budding Hebrew literature also influenced his works, notably that of his friend, Yosef Haim Brenner. In Germany, Agnon also spent time with the Hebraists Hayim Nahman Bialik and Ahad Ha'am.

The communities he passed through in his life are reflected in his works:

• Galicia: in the books The Bridal Canopy, A City and the Fullness Thereof, A Simple Story and A Guest for the Night.
• Germany: in the stories "Fernheim", "Thus Far" and "Between Two Cities".
• Jaffa: in the stories "Oath of Allegiance", "Tmol Shilshom" and "The Dune".
• Jerusalem: "Tehilla", "Tmol Shilshom", "Ido ve-Inam" and "Shira".

Nitza Ben-Dov writes about Agnon's use of allusiveness, free-association and imaginative dream-sequences, and discusses how seemingly inconsequential events and thoughts determine the lives of his characters.

Some of Agnon's works, such as The Bridal Canopy, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, and The Doctor's Divorce, have been adapted for theatre. A play based on Agnon's letters to his wife, "Esterlein Yakirati", was performed at the Khan Theater in Jerusalem.

Language

Agnon's writing often used words and phrases that differed from what would become established modern Hebrew. His distinct language is based on traditional Jewish sources, such as the Torah and the Prophets, Midrashic literature, the Mishnah, and other Rabbinic literature. Some examples include:

• batei yadayim (lit. "hand-houses") for modern kfafot (gloves).
• yatzta (יצתה‎) rather than the modern conjugation yatz'a (יצאה‎) ("she went out").
• rotev (רוטב‎) meaning soup in place of modern marak (מרק‎). In Modern Hebrew the term 'rotev' means 'sauce'.
• bet kahava for modern bet kafe (coffee house / café), based on transliteration of the word 'coffee' from Arabic, rather than the contemporary term common in Hebrew, which comes from European languages.

Bar-Ilan University has made a computerized concordance of his works in order to study his language.

Awards and critical acclaim

Agnon was twice awarded the Bialik Prize for literature (1934 and 1950). He was also twice awarded the Israel Prize, for literature (1954 and 1958).

In 1966, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people". The prize was shared with German Jewish author Nelly Sachs. In his speech at the award ceremony, Agnon introduced himself in Hebrew: "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". The award ceremony took place on a Saturday during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Agnon, who was religiously observant, postponed attendance at the awards ceremony until he had performed two Jewish ceremonies of his own on Saturday night, to end the Sabbath and to light the menorah.

In later years, Agnon's fame was such that when he complained to the municipality that traffic noise near his home was disturbing his work, the city closed the street to cars and posted a sign that read: "No entry to all vehicles, writer at work!"

Death and legacy

Agnon died in Jerusalem on February 17, 1970. His daughter, Emuna Yaron [he], continued to publish his work posthumously. Agnon's archive was transferred by the family to the National Library in Jerusalem. His home in Talpiot, built in 1931 in the Bauhaus style, was turned into a museum, Beit Agnon. The study where he wrote many of his works was preserved intact. Agnon's image, with a list of his works and his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, appeared on the fifty-shekel bill, second series, in circulation from 1985 to 2014.

The main street in Jerusalem's Givat Oranim neighborhood is called Sderot Shai Agnon, and a synagogue in Talpiot, a few blocks from his home, is named after him. Agnon is also memorialized in Buchach (now in Ukraine). The Historical Museum in Buchach has an exhibit about him and a bust of the author is mounted on a pedestal in a plaza across the street from the house where he lived. The house itself is preserved and marked as the home where Agnon lived from birth till the age of (approximately) 19; the street that runs in front of the house is named "Agnon Street" (in Ukrainian).

Agnotherapy is a method developed in Israel to help elderly people express their feelings.

Beit Agnon

After Agnon's death, the former mayor of Jerusalem Mordechai Ish-Shalom initiated the opening of his home to the public. In the early 1980s, the kitchen and family dining room were turned into a lecture and conference hall, and literary and cultural evenings were held there. In 2005, the Agnon House Association in Jerusalem renovated the building, which reopened in January 2009. The house was designed by the German-Jewish architect Fritz Korenberg, who was also his neighbor.

Published works

Novels and novellas

• The Bridal Canopy (1931), translated from Hakhnāsat kallāh. An epic describing Galician Judaism at the start of the 19th century. The story of a poor but devout Galician Jew, Reb Yudel, who wanders the countryside with his companion, Nuta, during the early 19th century, in search of bridegrooms for his three daughters.
• In the Heart of the Seas, a story of a journey to the land of Israel (1933), translated from Bi-levav yamim. A short novel about a group of ten men who travel from Eastern Europe to Jerusalem.
• A Simple Story (1935), translated from Sipur pashut. A short novel about a young man, his search for a bride, and the lessons of marriage.
• A Guest for the Night (1938), translated from Ore'ah Noteh Lalun. A novel about the decline of eastern European Jewry. The narrator visits his old hometown and discovers that great changes have occurred since World War I.
• Betrothed (1943), translated from Shevuat Emunim. A short novel.
• Only Yesterday (1945), translated from Temol shilshom. An epic novel set in the Second Aliyah period. It follows the story of the narrator from Galicia to Jaffa to Jerusalem. Sometimes translated as Those Were The Days.
• Edo and Enam (1950). A short novel.
• To This Day (1952), translated from ʿAd henah. A tale of a young writer stranded in Berlin during World War I.
• Shira (1971). A novel set in Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s. Manfred Herbst, a middle-aged professor suffering from boredom, spends his days prowling the streets searching for Shira, the beguiling nurse he met when his wife was giving birth to their third child. Against the background of 1930s Jerusalem, Herbst wages war against the encroachment of age.

Short stories

• Of Such and Of Such, a collection of stories, including "And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight", "Forsaken Wives", and "Belevav Yamim" ("In the Heart of the Seas") from 1933.
• At the Handles of the Lock (1923), a collection of love stories, including "Bidmay Yameha" ("In the Prime of Her Life"), "A Simple Story", and "The Dune".
• Near and Apparent, a collection of stories, including "The Two Sages Who Were In Our City", "Between Two Cities", "The Lady and the Peddler", the collection "The Book of Deeds", the satire "Chapters of the National Manual", and "Introduction to the Kaddish: After the Funerals of Those Murdered in the Land of Israel".
• Thus Far, a collection of stories, including "Thus Far", "Prayer", "Oath of Allegiance", "The Garment", "Fernheim", and "Ido ve-Inam" (Edo and Enam).
• The Fire and the Wood, a collection of stories including Hasidic tales, a semi-fictional account of Agnon's family history and other stories.
• Tale of the Goat

English translations

• "Forever (Ad Olam)", Translated and commentary by Yehuda Salu, CreateSpace, 2014.
• A Simple Story, revised edition, translated by Hillel Halkin, The Toby Press, 2014.
• Shira, revised edition of Agnon's final novel, The Toby Press, 2014
• Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam, contains two short novellas.
• Twenty-One Stories, a collection of translated stories from "The Book of Deeds" and elsewhere.
• Israeli Stories, ed. Joel Blocker. Contains the stories "Tehilah" (1950) and "Forevermore" (1954).
• New Writing in Israel, ed. Ezra Spicehandler and Curtis Arnson. Contains the story "Wartime in Leipzig", an excerpt from "In Mr. Lublin's Store".
• A Dwelling Place of My People, contains 16 short stories about the Hassidim of Poland, from the Hebrew volume "These and Those" (1932).
• Jaffa, belle of the seas: Selections from the works of S.Y. Agnon
• Tehilah, Israel Argosy, trans. by Walter Lever, Jerusalem Post Press, Jerusalem, 1956

Anthologies

• Days of Awe (1938), a book of customs, interpretations, and legends for the Jewish days of mercy and forgiveness: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the days between.
• Present at Sinai: The Giving of the Law (1959), an anthology for the festival of Shavuot.

Posthumous publications

• Ir Umeloah ("A City and the Fullness Thereof") (1973), a collection of stories and legends about Buczacz, Agnon's hometown.
• In Mr. Lublin's Store (1974), set in Germany of the First World War.
• Within the Wall (1975), a collection of four stories.
• From Myself to Myself (1976), a collection of essays and speeches.
• Introductions (1977), stories.
• Book, Writer and Story (1978), stories about writers and books from the Jewish sources.
• The Beams of Our House (1979), two stories, the first about a Jewish family in Galicia, the second about the history of Agnon's family.
• Esterlein Yakirati ("Dear Esther: Letters 1924–1931" (1983), letters from Agnon to his wife.
• A Shroud of Stories (1985).
• The Correspondence between S.Y. Agnon and S. Schocken (1991), letters between Agnon and his publisher.
• Agnon's Alef Bet Poems (1998), a children's guide to the Hebrew Alphabet.
• A Book That Was Lost: Thirty Five Stories (2008)

In 1977 the Hebrew University published Yiddish Works, a collection of stories and poems that Agnon wrote in Yiddish during 1903–1906.

See also

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

1. Laor, Dan (1998). S.Y. Agnon: A Biography (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Shocken.
2. Laor, Dan, Agnon's Life, Tel Aviv, Schocken, 1998 ; Falk, Avner, "Agnon and Psychoanalysis," Iton 77, No. 156, pp. 28–39, 1993 . Also see Arnold Band, "Shai Agnon by Dan Laor", AJS Review, Vol. 35 (2011), pp. 206—208. Band says that Agnon invented the commonly cited date July 17, 1888 in the 1920s.
3. Norwich, John Julius (1990). Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia Of The Arts. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 10. ISBN 978-0198691372.
4. "Agnon bio from Junior Judaica, Encyclopedia Judaica for Youth". Archived from the original on 2000-09-15 – via The Pedagogic Center.
5. "Alexander Marx". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2023-06-07.
6. "Agnon's Quest". Commentary Magazine. 1966-12-01. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
7. Weiss, Hillel; et al. (2010). Agnon and Germany: The Presence of the German World in the Writings of S.Y. Agnon. Bar Ilan University. p. 8.
8. ^ "Beit Agnon". Agnonhouse.org.il. Retrieved September 1, 2011.
9. Fisch, Harold (Autumn 1970). "The Dreaming Narrator in S. Y. Agnon". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 4 (1). Duke University Press: 49–68. doi:10.2307/1345251. JSTOR 1345251.
10. Schwartz, Richard H. (2001). Judaism and Vegetarianism. Lantern Books. pp. 171–172. ISBN 9781930051249.
11. Frydberg, Tracy (2018-04-18). "Mystery of who wrote the 'Prayer for the State of Israel' is finally solved". Times of Israel. Retrieved 31 October 2023.
12. "Nobel Speech". Nobelprize.org. December 10, 1966. Retrieved September 1, 2011.
13. Nitza Ben-Dov (1993). Agnon's art of indirection: Uncovering latent content in the fiction of S.Y Agnon. BRILL. ISBN 9004098631. Retrieved September 1, 2011.
14. ^ "Biography of Shmuel Yosef Agnon". Answers.com.
15. "List of Bialik Prize recipients 1933–2004 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv Municipality website" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-12-17. – which omits the award in 1934
16. "Israel Prize recipients in 1954 (in Hebrew)". Israel Prize Official Site. Archived from the original on March 7, 2012.
17. "Israel Prize recipients in 1958 (in Hebrew)". Israel Prize Official Site. Archived from the original on February 8, 2012.
18. "Nobel Prize in Literature 1966". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved October 17, 2008.
19. Horst Frenz, ed. Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901–1967. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1969. Nobel Prize acceptance speech
20. "S.Y. Agnon & the Orthodox Reader". Jewish Action. 2017-09-15. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
21. Mintz, Alan; et al. "Introduction". A Book That Was Lost. p. 29.
22. "About section". Agnon House Website.
23. "A little modesty goes a long way". Archived from the original on 2008-06-09. Retrieved 2009-02-17.
24. "Therapy through S.Y. Agnon stories helps the elderly face their realities". Haaretz.

Bibliography

• Arnold J. Band, Nostalgia and nightmare : a study in the fiction of S.Y. Agnon, Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 1968.
• Nitza Ben-Dov, Agnon's art of indirection: Uncovering latent content in the fiction of S.Y Agnon, Brill, (Leiden). 1993. ISBN 90-04-09863-1.
• Gershon Shaked, Shmuel Yosef Agnon: A Revolutionary Traditionalist. New York University Press, 1989.
• Anne Golomb Hoffman, Between Exile and Return: S.Y. Agnon and the Drama of Writing, New York: SUNY, 1991. ISBN 0-7914-0541-9.
• Amos Oz, The Silence of Heaven: Agnon's Fear of God, Princeton University Press, 2000.
• Roman Katsman, Literature, History, Choice: The Principle of Alternative History in Literature (S.Y. Agnon, The City with All That is Therein). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
• Abramson, Glenda (2008). Hebrew Writing of the First World War. Valentine Mitchell. ISBN 9780853037712.
• Yaniv Hagbi, Language, Absence, Play: Judaism and Superstructuralism in the Poetics of S. Y. Agnon, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009.
• Ilana Pardes, Agnon's Moonstruck Lovers: The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013.
• Ahuva Feldman, "Consciousness of time and mission in S. Y. Agnon's Shira. Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) 339-381.
• Marc Bernstein, Midrash and marginality: The Agunot of S. Y. Agnon and Devorah Baron. Hebrew Studies 42:7-58.
• Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven (April 2004). "Sentient Dogs, Liberated Rams, and Talking Asses: Agnon's Biblical Zoo". AJS Review. 28 (1): 105–136. doi:10.1017/S0364009404000078. S2CID 163052331.

External links

• Biography of Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Jewish Agency for Israel)
• Archive of Midrash Agnon course on 5 short stories from Agnon House and WebYeshiva.org.
• Archive of course on Agnon's novella "Tehilla" broadcast from Agnon House and WebYeshiva.org.
• Shiri Lev Ari: S.Y. Agnon's relatives: The East Jerusalem Nashashibis (Ha'aretz, July 10, 2006)
• Dan Laor: Agnon's biographer describes his long journey home
• Shmuel Yosef Agnon at Find a Grave
• Biography
• Jewish Renaissance Pioneers: Shmuel Yosef Agnon
• Agnon's Nobel Prize Speech
• Shmuel Yosef Agnon on Nobelprize.org
• Ziva Shamir, The portrait of Agnon's stage adapter as a literary interpreter (Lecture)

v t e Israeli Nobel laureates
1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Literature) 1978: Menachem Begin (Peace) 1994: Shimon Peres / Yitzhak Rabin (Peace) 2002: Daniel Kahneman (Economics) 2004: Aaron Ciechanover / Avram Hershko (Chemistry) 2005: Robert Aumann (Economics) 2009: Ada Yonath (Chemistry) 2011: Dan Shechtman (Chemistry) 2013: Michael Levitt / Arieh Warshel (Chemistry) 2021: Joshua Angrist (Economics)
Italics indicate a Nobel Memorial Prize, i.e. not one of the original Prizes bequested by Alfred Nobel.

v t e Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature
1901–1920	1901: Sully Prudhomme 1902: Theodor Mommsen 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1904: Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz 1906: Giosuè Carducci 1907: Rudyard Kipling 1908: Rudolf Eucken 1909: Selma Lagerlöf 1910: Paul Heyse 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann 1913: Rabindranath Tagore 1914 1915: Romain Rolland 1916: Verner von Heidenstam 1917: Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan 1918 1919: Carl Spitteler 1920: Knut Hamsun
1921–1940	1921: Anatole France 1922: Jacinto Benavente 1923: W. B. Yeats 1924: Władysław Reymont 1925: George Bernard Shaw 1926: Grazia Deledda 1927: Henri Bergson 1928: Sigrid Undset 1929: Thomas Mann 1930: Sinclair Lewis 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt (posthumously) 1932: John Galsworthy 1933: Ivan Bunin 1934: Luigi Pirandello 1935 1936: Eugene O'Neill 1937: Roger Martin du Gard 1938: Pearl S. Buck 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää 1940
1941–1960	1941 1942 1943 1944: Johannes V. Jensen 1945: Gabriela Mistral 1946: Hermann Hesse 1947: André Gide 1948: T. S. Eliot 1949: William Faulkner 1950: Bertrand Russell 1951: Pär Lagerkvist 1952: François Mauriac 1953: Winston Churchill 1954: Ernest Hemingway 1955: Halldór Laxness 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez 1957: Albert Camus 1958: Boris Pasternak 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo 1960: Saint-John Perse
1961–1980	1961: Ivo Andrić 1962: John Steinbeck 1963: Giorgos Seferis 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award) 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias 1968: Yasunari Kawabata 1969: Samuel Beckett 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1971: Pablo Neruda 1972: Heinrich Böll 1973: Patrick White 1974: Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson 1975: Eugenio Montale 1976: Saul Bellow 1977: Vicente Aleixandre 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer 1979: Odysseas Elytis 1980: Czesław Miłosz
1981–2000	1981: Elias Canetti 1982: Gabriel García Márquez 1983: William Golding 1984: Jaroslav Seifert 1985: Claude Simon 1986: Wole Soyinka 1987: Joseph Brodsky 1988: Naguib Mahfouz 1989: Camilo José Cela 1990: Octavio Paz 1991: Nadine Gordimer 1992: Derek Walcott 1993: Toni Morrison 1994: Kenzaburō Ōe 1995: Seamus Heaney 1996: Wisława Szymborska 1997: Dario Fo 1998: José Saramago 1999: Günter Grass 2000: Gao Xingjian
2001–2020	2001: V. S. Naipaul 2002: Imre Kertész 2003: J. M. Coetzee 2004: Elfriede Jelinek 2005: Harold Pinter 2006: Orhan Pamuk 2007: Doris Lessing 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio 2009: Herta Müller 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa 2011: Tomas Tranströmer 2012: Mo Yan 2013: Alice Munro 2014: Patrick Modiano 2015: Svetlana Alexievich 2016: Bob Dylan 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro 2018: Olga Tokarczuk 2019: Peter Handke 2020: Louise Glück
2021–present	2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah 2022: Annie Ernaux 2023: Jon Fosse 2024: Han Kang

• 1888 births
• 1970 deaths
• 20th-century Israeli novelists
• 20th-century Israeli poets
• 20th-century short story writers
• Ashkenazi Jews in Mandatory Palestine
• Jews from Austria-Hungary
• Burials at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives
• Emigrants from Austria-Hungary to the Ottoman Empire
• Hebrew-language poets
• Israeli Nobel laureates
• Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe)
• Jewish Israeli writers
• Nobel laureates from Austria-Hungary
• Nobel laureates in Literature
• Orthodox Jews in Mandatory Palestine
• People from Buchach
• Writers from Ternopil Oblast
• Writers from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
• Israel Prize in literature recipients
• Israeli male short story writers
• Israeli novelists
• Israeli Orthodox Jews
• Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent
• Israeli people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
• Israeli short story writers
• Short story writers from Austria-Hungary
• Bialik Prize recipients