Ancestral Tales: Reading the Buczacz Stories of S. Y. Agnon by Alan Mintz (review)

Alan Mintz's Ancestral Tales provides the fullest critical account of Agnon's A City in Its Fullness, Agnon's posthumous volume of stories about his Galician hometown from its beginnings until the eighteenth century. It is likely to remain the definitive account. Many of the readings are innovative, and all are informed by a rich sense of the cultural and historical backgrounds on which Agnon drew. Although some of the claims made for the artistic achievement of the Agnon volume may be overstated, this last book by Alan Mintz remains an important achievement.