Among modern Hebrew writers, Yosef Haim Brenner was ranked high from the moment that his early works of fiction were published in the Russian empire during the first years of the twentieth century. His subsequent entry into the fields of Hebrew-language journalism and literary criticism gradually added to his reputation: a writer and thinker who, in his own small sub-world, could not be ignored. And his death – he was killed while still a relatively young man during the Arab riots in Jaffa in 1921 – provided him with a unique place in the collective memory of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine). The sense of the tragic that pervades almost everything which he wrote was then, as it were, sealed forever: retroactively sacrilized by his violent end in the looming conflict between Jews and Arabs in the land claimed by both peoples.

It is in no way surprising, therefore, that Brenner's life and writings have been the object of sustained attention ever since his murder. In this respect, pride of place has to go to Yitzhak Bakon whose two-volume biography and other studies of Brenner in his early years represents a work of meticulous research and an invaluable source for all subsequent scholarship.