Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $3.38, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Toby Press.
Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $3.38, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Toby Press.
Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $3.38, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Toby Press.
Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $10.31, good condition, Sold by Books From California rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Simi Valley, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by The Toby Press.
Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $20.00, like new condition, Sold by Southampton Sag Harbor Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Southampton, NY, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by The Toby Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Like New in Like New jacket. First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped ($24.95 price intact). Published by Toby Press, 2008. Octavo. Pictorial boards. Book is like new; clean with no writing or names. Sharp corners and spine straight. Binding tight and pages crisp. Dust jacket is like new with light shelf wear and a few light scratches. 178 pages. ISBN: 9781592642144. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions or if you would like a photo. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Southampton, New York. We Buy Books! Individual titles, libraries, collections. Message us if you have books to sell!
Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $23.43, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensenville, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Toby Press Ltd.
Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $28.23, new condition, Sold by Aardvark Books Ltd rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bucknell, HEREFORDSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2008 by Toby Press.
Add this copy of To This Day to cart. $30.40, new condition, Sold by Booksplease rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Southport, MERSEYSIDE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2008 by Toby Press.
Published in 1952, "To this Day" was the last novel of Israeli author, S.Y. Agnon, (1887 --1970) who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1965. Hillel Halkin (b. 1939), a prolific translator, journalist, and author, translated the book and wrote a lengthy, detailed Introduction. Halkin was born in New York City and emigrated to Israel where he has been a tireless champion of Zionism.
Set in Berlin, Leipzig, and a small town, Grimma, during the Great War, "To this Day" is narrated in the first person by a young man in his mid-20s, Shmuel Josef, a name shared with another character in the story. The narrator is a non-practicing Orthodox Jew who had emigrated from Eastern Europe to Palestine and then emigrated again to Germany at the outset of the Great War. He is compelled to remain in Germany until the war's end. The narrator describes his efforts in Berlin to find a room in the face of a severe housing shortage resulting from wartime conditions. He moves again and again with many comical misadventures with his landladies. He learns during his stay that an old scholarly friend in Grimma has died and that the friend's ailing wife wants his help in preserving her husband's large library of Judaica. The narrator goes back and forth on crowded, dirty trains from Berlin to the transfer station of Leipzig to Grimma to see to the books. In the process, he meets many old friends, including an old flame, together with new people.
It is a bare bones story. told with humor. The story, however, is told in a meandering, bantering, and elliptical way as the narrator often gets seemingly sidetracked with anecdotes piling upon on each other. The point of the story becomes hidden or lost. In addition, the story moves forward through long discussions between the narrator, his landladies, and his many former acquaintances. The discussions involve difficult topics, including the nature of Germany's war effort, Zionism, Judaism and secularism, and identity and self-knowledge. These themes create a difficult, reflective book while threatening to overwhelm the slender line of the story.
The narrator is shown as rootless and in exile with, during most of his stay in Germany, little direction in his life. He moved to Palestine and then, will little explanation in the novel, returned to Europe. His actions show a tension between his sense of Jewish identity, to use an over-worked phrase, and a desire for a broader, secular life, including a sexual life. The book suggests that meaningful Jewish life is not to be found in Europe as the narrator moves unhappily from room to room, suggesting that there is no place for him outside of Palestine. German life is critiqued throughout in its materialism and militarism even while the narrator does not suffer from any overt acts of anti-Semitism. The book explores the differences between the secularized, educated German Jews, who are disliked by most of their German neighbors, and the Russian and East European Jews who find themselves in Germany during the course of the War. The values of Jewishness in a Jewish homeland in the presence of books, prayers, and those of Jewish background is juxtaposed against life in the diaspora with its many influences. The book is full of lengthy religious and philosophical discussions involving the narrator and others. At one point late in the novel, a character observes how some Jews have turned to philosophy in a futile effort to resolve the tensions in their situations. The character objects to philosophy as leading to a lack of faith and concludes "[M]ay we worship Him in simplicity as befits the descendants of Jacob, whom the Bible calls a simple man." To Agnon's credit, the book is subtle and nuanced and many different positions are presented.
Halkin's Introduction points out that the book generally has not been highly regarded among Agnon's work. He discusses well the many ambiguities and layers of the story. I found the introduction helped my understanding of what is, in any event, a puzzling, wandering narrative, difficult to follow. Halkin gives a strongly Zionistic reading to the book which accords with his own position and, probably, that of the author.
I was glad I read this book, with its patchwork style, and had the opportunity to think through various of its sections of the questions it raises. The book offers a view of the home front in WW I Germany. It offers a sense of the difficulties of finding an identity both for the narrator and for a people. Readers will come to understand the conditions leading to the narrator's and to the author's and translator's understanding of religion, identity and Zionism even if they do not see their own lives in the terms of this book.
