Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון; August 8, 1887[1] – February 17, 1970)[2] was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer.

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

Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes (later Agnon) was born in Buczacz (Butschatsch in German), Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then within the Austro-Hungary and now Buchach, Ukraine.

His father, Shalom Mordechai Halevy, was ordained as a rabbi but worked in the fur trade and had many connections among the Hasidim.

In 1912, at the urging of Yosef Haim Brenner, he published a novella, "Vehaya Ha'akov Lemishor" ("The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight").

The assimilated, secular German Jews, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig among them, considered Agnon a legitimate relic, religious man familiar with Jewish scripture.

[8] Agnon's place in Hebrew literature was assured when his novel Hakhnasat Kalla ("The Bridal Canopy") appeared in 1931 to critical acclaim.

[10] During much of the 20th century, there was debate about whether Agnon or Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog was the actual 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.

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

[13] 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.

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".

[23] 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.

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.

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.