Мой Михаэль (Михаэль שלי)

1968 novel by Amos Oz

My Michael ( Mikha'el sheli) is a 1968 novel by the Israeli author Amos Oz. The story, told in first person by a dissatisfied wife, describes her deteriorating marriage to a geology student and her escape into a private fantasy world of violent heroics and sexual encounters. Set in Jerusalem of the 1950s, the novel uses the physical and political landscape of the city as a metaphor for the protagonist's inner struggle. The novel garnered much controversy upon its publication in Israel, and was also the best selling novel in Israel in the 1968–1969 season. The novel was translated into English in 1972 and has since been translated into more than 30 languages. It was adapted into a Hebrew language film in 1976.

Hannah Greenbaum, a first year literature student, meets Michael Gonen, a doctoral student in geology, by chance in her Hebrew University building. They date briefly and then marry, though their backgrounds and personalities could not be more dissimilar. They rent a small apartment in the Mekor Barukh neighborhood populated by religious Jews unlike themselves. Michael's aunts and other elderly acquaintances pop in and out of their lives, but Hannah is largely on her own as Michael pursues his degree. While Michael runs his life in a calm, methodical, unemotional manner, Hannah feels increasingly hemmed in by sameness and routine. She begins to escape into private fantasies – some featuring the heroes of her favorite childhood books, like Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff and Captain Nemo – and others based on her own dreams of being an exciting Sephardi woman named Yvonne Azulai, of being raped by strangers, of being a cold princess who commands others to go into battle for her. Two recurrent figures in her fantasies are Arab twin boys with whom she used to play as a child. Michael finally realizes how deeply she has sunken when she has a nervous breakdown one winter day before he is called up to serve in the 1956 Sinai campaign, and orders her to stay in bed until the doctor comes. But he cannot satisfy Hannah's unfulfilled sexual needs and her daydreams and nightmares continue, forcing her downward into a vortex of lust and fantasy. Hannah also finds it difficult to love their child, Yair, who is as pragmatic and non relationship oriented as his father. When Hannah finally conceives another child, Michael is no longer hers, having been seduced by an old college friend who constantly asks him to help her write her papers. The novel ends with Hannah still married, but for all intents and purposes estranged from Michael.

The relationship between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem and Israel lends an undercurrent of fear and mistrust to the story. While the Arab Israeli political situation is not discussed overtly, the setting of the novel in the early 1950s indicates that Israel had recently fought for its existence against armies from Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Iraq during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and the country continued to be targeted by "small scale Palestinian infiltrations – supported by the Arab states – into Israeli territory" between 1949 and 1956. Wells and Loy write: "The novel uses 1950s Jerusalem as a metaphor for Israel itself, portraying the community as it then was – a mostly besieged enclave in an ever threatening wilderness". The Arab twins who metamorphose in Hannah's imagination from childhood playmates into deadly terrorists are not the cause for her suffering, he explains, but a metaphor for it. But Oz said he worked on this novel every night as well. While his wife and daughters slept in their one and a half room apartment, he sat in the lavatory with the book on his knees, writing and smoking until the wee hours. After My Michael was published, Oz gave the royalties to the kibbutz, and successfully petitioned the kibbutz administration to allow him two days a week for writing. Oz rejected this comparison. The English edition, translated by Nicholas de Lange, would be the first of 16 of Oz's books translated into English by the British academic. The English edition was first published in 1972 by Chatto & Windus (London) and Alfred A. Knopf (New York). It is one of two Oz titles that have been translated into Arabic.

Upon its publication, the novel generated much controversy for its allusions to Arab Jewish relations. On the other hand, the main character, Hannah, was accused of being "anti Zionist" and an "Arab lover". Elon observed that the novel puts the lie to the Zionist dream of "a new, achievement oriented society", conveying instead "a bleak, depressive pessimism" in its portrait of modern Israeli life. Eric Silver of The Guardian agreed, saying that the novel "challenges the pioneering simplicities and immigrant aspirations (My son, Herr Doktor) that underpin Israeli society". The Chicago Tribune similarly noted the perceived abandonment of Zionist ideals, calling the "unsympathetic" portrait of Hannah "a caustic repudiation of the cherished conception of the young sabra as invariably vigorous, dedicated and brave". Following the publication of the translation in England and the United States in 1972, overseas reviews focused on the novel's "literary strengths, especially the rich detail and suggestive imagery by which it traces Hannah’s slow mental erosion". Locke favorably compares the novel's existentialist style to works by Ernest Hemingway, Cesare Pavese, Joan Didion, and Albert Camus's The Stranger and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. The Cincinnati Enquirer concurred, calling the character of Hannah "not interesting, [but] merely tiresome. She is afflicted with terribly tame erotic fantasies, blatant childhood holdovers, and very trite philosophical reflections". However, this review praised Oz's writing skills for "making her a believable neurotic. The end result is a very good writer in search of a better character".

In 1999, My Michael was named "one of the 100 great novels of the 20th century" by the Bertelsmann publishing house of Germany.

The novel was adapted by Israeli director screenwriter Dan Wolman as the 1974 release Michael Sheli (released in the U. S. in 1976). The Hebrew language film was submitted as the Israeli entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the 48th Academy Awards, but was ultimately not accepted as a nominee.