قصة الكتاب :
The Story of San Michele is a novel by Swedish author Axel Munthe. It is considered his best-known work and is part-autobiography and part-fiction. It was first published in English in 1929 and became an international bestseller. The book has sold several copies, been published in several editions and translated into more than 40 foreign languages. A German language film adaptation was also made in 1962. The book has 32 chapters and is a series of overlapping pieces that lack any particular chronological sequence. It is a mix of memoirs, personal philosophy and tall tales. Munthe’s stories are entertaining and also contain a portrait of peasant life in Capri, an impressionable place that he had once visited in his teens.

\r\nAxel Munthe published this book towards the latter part of his life. He started writing it at the behest of his doctor, who recommended this when treating him for insomnia. Munthe graduated in medicine in Paris and worked in several countries. This reflects in his writing. His lyrical novel is replete with medical interest and descriptions. In fact, his entire writing can be summarized as an autobiographical tour of his career. His personal life has been kept out of it. The 32 chapters in the book are like loosely connected fragments of his own life. The one thing that frames these pieces together is his act of discovering, buying and rebuilding the villa on Capri. Munthe seems to have constructed the house and the novel in a similar manner – by using material from different sources and assembling them together into a whole. The variant characters he brings to life, the rich incidents that he describes and the ease with which he shifts between what would ordinarily appear as different worlds all testify to this. Even in the house that he is building he uses a red granite Sphinx from Egypt and a marble head of Medusa. His writings make it evident that death fascinated him and that he was a strong believer in euthanasia. So caught up is he by this belief that his expressions at times seem to lose sight of the fact that the choice belongs to the patients. He was an ardent lover of animals and understood the limitations that 19th century medicine posed. One of the takeaways from this novel is that the narrator is someone who is impulsive, persuasive and not always reliable. He does not let facts stand in the way of a good story.

\r\nThe Story of San Michele is ridden with humour and drama, is sentimental and sarcastic, literary and journalistic, true and false and is as full of contradictions as the author himself. Surprisingly, despite the success of his work, Munthe has barely been mentioned or acknowledged in Swedish literary history. \r\n