My Michael.

OZ, Amos.

Item Number: 100433

London: Chatto & Windus, 1972.

First British edition of the author’s first book. Octavo, original cloth. Lengthily signed by the author on the front free endpaper as follows, “Best Wishes Amos Oz Tel Aviv 17.2.14 I am writing this because people I loved have died. I am writing this because when I was young I was full of the power of loving, and now that power of loving is dying. I do not want to die.” The inscription is from the opening lines of this novel. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange. A unique inscription with the very first words from Oz’s premier novel transcribed.

The New York Review of Books wrote of My Michael that it is "a dazzling, very beautiful, splendidly conceived and composed book." Set in 1950s Jerusalem, it tells the story of a remote and intense woman named Hannah Gonen and her marriage to a decent but unremarkable man named Michael. As the years pass and Hannah’s tempestuous fantasy life encroaches upon reality, she feels increasingly estranged from him and the marriage gradually disintegrates. Gorgeously written, profoundly moving, this extraordinary novel is at once a haunting love story, and a rich reflective portrait of a place. "Thoughtful, self-assured and highly sophisticated, full of the most skillful modulations of tone and texture. A modern Israeli Madame Bovary" (New York Times Book Review). It has been adapted into a movie, in Hebrew. The Bertelsmann publishing house named it among the one hundred best novels of the 20th century.