Sami Michael

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Sami Michael (born 1926) is an Israeli author. He was born as Sallah Menasse in Baghdad, Iraq, where his father was a merchant. He grew up and was educated in a mixed neighborhood of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. At 15 he joined the Communist underground in Iraq.

At 17 he began to write for underground's newspapers. When he was 21 a warrant was issued for his arrest. He fled to Iran, where he continued his communist activities. In 1949 he emigrated to Israel, settling in Jaffa and later Haifa.

Michael worked as a water surveyor in the hydrological service for 25 years, while publishing articles in the Israeli Arabic-language press. In 1974, he published his first novel Equal and More Equal.

Michael is a graduate of the University of Haifa in psychology and Arabic literature. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1982 he was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Writers. In 1992 in Berlin he received a citation from the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).

[edit] Writing

Michael claims that "life experience has given me a whole gallery of characters." His style is clean, direct, and bare of symbols, yet with an outstanding expressiveness. Each story exudes authenticity and personal involvement.

In some books, Michael draws on the excitement of his own formative experiences. Sufa ben ha-D'kalim (meaning "Storm Among the Palms") is a book for young readers about the life of a young Jew in the alleys of Baghdad. It is a world of magic and hazard, of pranks, streetfights, gloomy love, and standing up to hooligans. Michael describes his own youth similarly to that of Nuri, the hero. "I wasn't a typical Jewish boy. I dared, I broke out, I went on adventures that weren't customary for a Jewish boy from the ghetto." Pahonim ve-Halomot (meaning "Tin Shacks and Dreams") tells the lives of youths and adults in a poor transit camp in the early years of the State of Israel. Seeds of violence sprout into a confrontation between good and evil, while dreams of happiness are hatched.

Other books explore confrontations between political identities in Israel, comparable to the plural political identities within Michael himself. "It is as if, sometimes, I feel I am two persons. One is an Arab Iraqi, the other an Israeli Jew." [1] Hasut (meaning "Refuge") is a novel of a Communist Jewish couple who give refuge in their home to an Arab party activist during the Yom Kippur War. Hatsotsra ba-Wadi (meaning "Trumpet in the Wadi") is a novel centering around the love story between an Arab girl and a new immigrant from Russia in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood of Haifa.

[edit] Selected books

  • Shavim ve-Shavim Yoter (meaning "Equal and More Equal", 1974)
  • Sufa ben ha-D'kalim (meaning "Storm Among the Palms", for children, 1975). Won the Ze'ev Prize.
  • Hasut (1977), in English translation as Refuge (1988)
  • Hofen shel Arafel (meaning "Handful of Fog", 1979)
  • Pahonim ve-Halomot (meaning "Tin Shacks and Dreams", 1979)
  • Ele Shivte Israel: Shtem Esre Sihot al ha-Sh'ela ha-Edutit (meaning "These are the Tribes of Israel: Twelve Conversations on the Question of Communities", 1984)
  • Hatsotsrot ba-Wadi (1987), in English translation as Trumpet in the Wadi (2003). Also adapted as a successful play and as a movie.
  • Ahava ben ha-D'kalim (meaning "Love Among the Palms", 1990)
  • Viktoria (1993)
  • Gvulot ha-Ruah (meaning "Spiritual Borders", 2000)
  • Mayim Noshkim le-Mayim (meaning "Water Kisses Water", 2001)
  • Yonim be-Trafalgar (meaning "Doves in Trafalgar", 2005), a sort of plot sequel to the book Return to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani

[edit] References

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