This book comprises two novellas that expose the reader to Agnon’s stately prose at greater length than his short stories but less overwhelmingly than in a novel like his Shira.

The first novella, Betrothed, is set in Turkish Palestine in the early days of Zionist settlement before the World War One, a period when Agnon himself lived there for a time. He shows us a world that seems to be a very different place from contemporary Israel; ’Life was unexacting, very little happened’.

Jewish though any book written in Hebrew must be, borrowing so much resonance from the language of the Bible, Agnon here also seems deeply classical. There is a trance-like, elegiac quality to the unreeling of events, that creates a contemplative vision rather than a narrative noise.

In this early Zionist world we hear about the dreams of pioneer life; ’He saw himself joining a settlement and becoming a farmer, sowing seed with one hand and holding his Talmud in the other’. Here we can smell and taste a quiet pre-war world — but it is not a ’traditional’ one, for one thing rather self-assured women feature in Betrothed, some have emigrated alone and are particularly radical and independent while others are the more respectable daughters of emigrating fathers. Betrothed, as the title suggests, is the story of a love but with a very unexpected ending.

Edo and Enam is set in a later and now British- rather than Turkish-run Palestine, in around 1947 — except that this is a highly mysterious text, like science fiction at times and does not seem set in a real time or place. It moves by subtle narrative transactions, it is a work of genius, unlike anything else. For example, another story irrupts inside the story of Edo and Enam; about a Lost Tribe in the mountains, who have retained a Biblical Jewish life-style.

If sometimes bewildering, Edo and Enam is also often very beautiful; Agnon could effortlessly discover beauty in his language and deservedly counts as one of the founders of its modern literature.

’Jaffa is the darling of the waters: the waves of the Great Sea kiss her shores, a blue sky is her daily cover, she brims with every kind of people, Jews and Ishmaelites and Christians...’ (p3 from Betrothed)

’But winds of change began to blow through the yeshiva walls; among them, a purifying wind that brought new promise of national revival. The students of the yeshiva began to speak of God’s prophecies, of the return to Zion and the sprouting of the horn of salvation for the house of Israel in Israel’s holy land. Some of them were later to belie their own words; others had the privilege of fulfilling in their lives what they sought after in their hearts. And when Yehiel heard that in the Land of Israel there were Jews who lived upon the soil, he resolved to go there and fulfil the Torah through work. He saw himself joining a settlement and becoming a farmer, sowing seed with one hand and holding his Talmud in the other; or following the plough with his copy of the Jerusalem Talmud resting upon it, thus at once fulfilling the Torah of the Land of Israel and the working of its soil.’ p34-5 from Betrothed

’Perfect as the moon was Gemulah; her eyes were sparks of light; her face was like the morning star; her voice was sweet as the shades of evening. When she lifted up her voice in song, it was as if all the gates of melody were opened. she knew, besides, how to bake kavanim and how to roast meat on hot coals. Though Gemulah was only twelve years old when Gamzu first chanced upon her home, her wisdom shone out like that of a mature woman, for her father had passed on to her the secret knowledge laid up by his ancestors.’ (p200 from Edo and Enam)