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.”