When I was compiling my list of countries and authors and books, I immediately put down Amos Oz for Israel. He'd been in the back of my mind as someone I should read for a long time, so he was the obvious choice for me. A few months later, I found a copy of My Michael for $1 at a thrift store and so my Israeli book was selected. I hesitated a little when I read the back cover blurb, which described the book as chronicling a woman falling out of love with her husband. An intimate book about a couple's relationship wasn't quite what I had in mind for my representative book for Israel. However — and in retrospect this seems obvious — My Michael was about much more than a couple's relationship.* The book takes place mostly in Jerusalem between 1950 and 1960: Israeli independence is new; Israel is being populated with Jews from across the diaspora; the Suez crisis happens. The book is intimate, but the outside world is everywhere in it.
* Similarly, the book I read from Japan was a very intimate book made up of letters between an ex husband and wife, and yet it also felt very much about Japan and life there in the 1980s.
