Uri Nissan Gnessin is considered one of the greatest prose writers in Hebrew literature and among the pioneers of 20th-century modern literature. His unique writing enchanted generations of readers and his works were published in many editions. Gnessin was born in 1879 in Starodub, Russia, and already as a young yeshiva student, he established a handwritten newspaper in which he published his poems. In 1904 his first collection of short stories, The Shadows of Life, was published. He traveled frequently throughout Russia and Poland, and in 1907 he moved to London with his friend Yosef Haim Brenner, where they co-edited the Hebrew periodical, Ha’Meorer. Later that year he moved to Israel, but failing to find his place there, he returned to Russia the following year. Gnessin was also a translator (he translated into Hebrew stories by Chekhov and Baudelaire, among others), and published essays and literary reviews. Gnessin passed away in Warsaw in 1913.
