Refuge

By Sami Michael

In the surprising world that Sami Michael reveals, Shula, an Ashkenazic Jew, is the center of a web of brilliantly drawn characters: Israeli Arabs, Palestinian refugees, "black Jews," and "white Jews." Swirling in and out of Shula's story are poignantly drawn minor players - an Arab/Israeli couple, their ever-more-militant son, a seductive Arab poet, and political outsiders in a fragile society at war. Sami Michael was born in Baghdad in 1926, fled to Iran during WWII, and eventually made his way to Israel. His first novel, Equal and More Equal was published to critical acclaim. Refuge was his second major work, written originally in Hebrew but, he adds, "with the emotional baggage of the Third World."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0827603088
• ISBN13: 9780827603080
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: Jewish Publication Society
• Length: 382 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Identity, Eros, and the Arab Israel Conflict

Sami Michael's Refuge is an ambitious novel which attempts to do a great deal in a small amount of space. That Michael largely succeeds is a testimony to his great gifts as a novelist. The main flaw of the book is that Michael has perhaps too many main characters, and this dilutes the thrust of the novel, the momentum, and the reader's ability to respond to the plight of the characters. But on the upside, Michael is able to create a great deal of tension in this novel. He moves fluidly from the Israeli Jewish world, the world of Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Arabs, and every identity in between, and is completely at home in each. He tackles the thorny subject of sexual relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs, making it the fulcrum for his examination of Arab-Jewish relations. Violence, sex, and identity become entwined in interesting and novel ways in Refuge, surprising and even shocking the reader.

A story of complex identities

Sami Michael weaves the intricate and complex plot which is Refuge by introducing the reader to a large number of characters, all of whom have very complex identities. He tells of the Israeli Jew who was born in Iraq, and the Arab with Israeli citizenship who visits his cousins in a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The multiple layers of each of the numerous characters we meet succeed in opening the readers' eyes to the layers of complexity which are Israeli society.