Etgar Keret – författare

From one of the most acclaimed masters of the short story form whom the New York Times calls “Genius,” a darkly funny collection of stories explores themes of identity, reality, and meaning.Etgar Keret is the world’s most famous living Israeli writer, known for writing short stories that are lean and accessible in style, and whimsical, surrealist, and darkly funny in subject. His work explores life’s smallest, most unremarkable interactions in ways that are profound and unusual. The characters populating his fiction have relatable work and relationship problems. They live in a world of ever-advancing technology, but it is always degraded by the baseness of human passions and brutality: a character’s partner is a reality show contestant from a parallel dimension; another finds the asteroid they paid to have named after their wife is scheduled to collide with earth; and an elderly widow convinces a popular AI program to commit suicide.These stories speak to our current moment in time: the uncertainty and fragility—full of misunderstandings and miscommunications—while looking for reasons and the strength to find hope. His stories reveal the fault lines and uncomfortable truths in our society in a style that is memorably his own.

'Etgar Keret's short stories are fierce, funny, full of energy and insight, and at the same time they are often deep, tragic and very moving' - Amos OzAt a children's tea party, a magician tries to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but takes out only its head; a young man has a mother and girlfriend who each demand that he gives them the other one's heart; while a Nobel Laureate asks an orphan to perform a very strange task.In Etgar Keret's blackly comic stories the unexpected can, and usually does, happen. They are clever, quick, sometimes violent and often intensely poignant. They are, in short, brilliant.

Classic warped and wonderful stories from a “genius” (The New York Times) and master storyteller.   Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Etgar Keret’s stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. As with the best writers of fiction, hilarity and anguish are the twin pillars of his work. Keret covers a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain—from a father’s first lesson to his boy to a standoff between soldiers caught up in the Middle East conflict to a slice of life where nothing much happens.   New to Riverhead’s list, these wildly inventive, uniquely humane stories are for fans of Etgar Keret’s inimitable style and readers of transforming, brilliant fiction.From the Trade Paperback edition.

A brilliant, life-affirming, and hilarious memoir from a “genius” (The New York Times) and master storyteller. With illustrations by Jason Polan.The seven years between the birth of Etgar Keret’s son and the death of his father were good years, though still full of reasons to worry. Lev is born in the midst of a terrorist attack. Etgar’s father gets cancer. The threat of constant war looms over their home and permeates daily life.What emerges from this dark reality is a series of sublimely absurd ruminations on everything from Etgar’s three-year-old son’s impending military service to the terrorist mind-set behind Angry Birds. There’s Lev’s insistence that he is a cat, releasing him from any human responsibilities or rules. Etgar’s siblings, all very different people who have chosen radically divergent paths in life, come together after his father’s shivah to experience the grief and love that tie a family together forever. This wise, witty memoir—Etgar’s first nonfiction book published in America, and told in his inimitable style—is full of wonder and life and love, poignant insights, and irrepressible humor.From the Hardcover edition.

Kneller's Happy Campers is a strange, dark but funny tale set in a world very much like our own but it's an afterlife populated by people who have killed themselves - many of them are young, and most of them bear the marks of their death... bullet wounds, broken necks...(those who have over-dosed are known as 'Juliets'). When Mordy, our hero, discovers that his girlfriend from his life before has also 'offed' herself, he sets out to find her, and so follows a strange adventure... Full of the weird and wonderful characters, and the slightly surreal twist of events that we've come to expect from Etgar Keret, this novella is full of humour and comic flashes, but it is also wistful, longing for a better world and perfect love.

Kneller's Happy Campers is a strange, dark but funny tale set in a world very much like our own but it's an afterlife populated by people who have killed themselves - many of them are young, and most of them bear the marks of their death... bullet wounds, broken necks...(those who have over-dosed are known as 'Juliets'). When Mordy, our hero, discovers that his girlfriend from his life before has also 'offed' herself, he sets out to find her, and so follows a strange adventure... Full of the weird and wonderful characters, and the slightly surreal twist of events that we've come to expect from Etgar Keret, this novella is full of humour and comic flashes, but it is also wistful, longing for a better world and perfect love.

Etgar Keret is an ingenious and original master of the short story. Radical, witty and always unusual, declared a 'genius' by the New York Times, Keret brings all of his prodigious talent to bear in this bestselling collection.A man barges into a writer's house and, holding a gun to his head, demands that he tell him a story, something to take him away from the real world. A pathological liar discovers one day that all the lies he tells come true. A young woman finds a zip in her boyfriend's mouth, and when she opens it he unfolds to reveal a completely different man inside. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is at once Keret's most mature and most playful work yet, and establishes him as one of the great international writers of our time.

'Etgar Keret's short stories are fierce, funny, full of energy and insight, and at the same time they are often deep, tragic and very moving' - Amos OzAt a children's tea party, a magician tries to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but takes out only its head; a young man has a mother and girlfriend who each demand that he gives them the other one's heart; while a Nobel Laureate asks an orphan to perform a very strange task.In Etgar Keret's blackly comic stories the unexpected can, and usually does, happen. They are clever, quick, sometimes violent and often intensely poignant. They are, in short, brilliant.

In this collection of brilliant, bite-sized satiric tales, Israel's bestselling Etgar Keret chronicles the strange ironies that suffuse his characters' lives. Daring, illuminating, intense and poignant, these stories are as painfully funny as they are brief and cover a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain, confirming Keret's status as Israel's national conscience.

Presented for the first time in full color, award-winning writer Etgar Keret (The Seven Good Years) and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Asaf Hanuka’s (The Realist) powerful graphic novel, Pizzeria Kamikaze, is a most unexpected story of love, loss, and escape. Mordy wanted to get away. Now condemned to an afterlife exclusively for all victims of suicide, he still has to attend a crappy job in a place no less crappy than the place he came from. When he discovers that his beloved ex-girlfriend is there too, he embarks on much needed road trip through an absurdist and fantastical landscape to find her.

Israeli crime fiction that "sets the bar high for subsequent Noir offerings. The genre is hot, Tel Aviv is exotic, and this volume is outstanding" (Library Journal, starred review).Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched with the summer ''04 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. For Tel Aviv Noir, Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron have masterfully assembled some of Israel''s top contemporary writers into a compulsively readable collection. Along with Gon Ben Ari''s story "Clear Recent History"—winner of the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award for Best P.I. Short Story—this anthology includes brand-new stories by: Etgar Keret, Gadi Taub, Lavie Tidhar, Deakla Keydar, Matan Hermoni, Julia Fermentto, Shimon Adaf, Alex Epstein, Antonio Ungar, Gai Ad, Assaf Gavron, Silje Bekeng, and Yoav Katz; translated by Yardenne Greenspan. Jewish Journal''s Noteworthy Books for the New Year "There''s a marvelous underlying tension to [the stories], a paranoid tinge, as if some vast monstrous conspiracy is lurking behind every misdeed and bad stroke of luck." —San Francisco Book Review"The collection reflects much of the daily reality of the city, but not the sort one is likely to read in tour guides . . . There''s a complexity and virtuosity to plot and prose that leaves the reader with a sense of satisfaction and appreciation, despite the typically devastating denouement of the tales . . . Superb." —PopMatters "Consistently strong . . . Definitely one of the highlights in the long-running Akashic series." —Booklist, starred review

Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitic remarks both real and imagined, and, perhaps most worrisome of all, a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to chase him to the grave. Emerging from these darkly absurd circumstances is a series of funny, tender ruminations on everything from his three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind Angry Birds. Moving deftly between the personal and the political, the playful and the profound, The Seven Good Years takes a life-affirming look at the human need to find good in the least likely places, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our capricious world.

Winner of the 2018 Sapir Prize. You need to bribe someone into giving you weed? Don't worry, just step into this court room and call the defendant a murderer. You're a rich, lonely man and you want the joy of company? Don't worry, just buy up people's birthdays, and you'll have friends calling every day. You need to get girls into bed? Don't worry, your writer friend will write you a very persuasive story. You're standing on the edge of a very high building, with all of your wretched sorrows? Don't worry, fly already!In these 22 short stories, wild capers reveal painful emotional truths, and the bizarre is just another name for the familiar. Wickedly funny and thrillingly smart, Fly Already is a collage of absurdity, despair and love, written by veteran commentator on the circus farce that is life.

Imagine a world in which you could take back the stupid thing you just said, unspill the coffee, avoid the accident, roll life back thirty seconds and do it over again - this time the right way. In Etgar Keret's universe, all things are possible. A man can take a yoga class that genuinely transforms his life. A son has the chance to redo a fateful exchange with his father. An alien can offer a guided tour of the destroyed earth. And an angry squirrel can wreck a wedding. Ranging from sci-fi scenarios to fictional thought-experiments and short vignettes, the stories here all deliver the irreverence, surprises, existential unease, hope and humanity we have come to expect from Etgar Keret - one of the most original and entertaining storytellers at work today.

Imagine a world in which you could take back the stupid thing you just said, unspill the coffee, avoid the accident, roll life back thirty seconds and do it over again - this time the right way. In Etgar Keret's universe, all things are possible. A man can take a yoga class that genuinely transforms his life. A son has the chance to redo a fateful exchange with his father. An alien can offer a guided tour of the destroyed earth. And an angry squirrel can wreck a wedding. Ranging from sci-fi scenarios to fictional thought-experiments and short vignettes, the stories here all deliver the irreverence, surprises, existential unease, hope and humanity we have come to expect from Etgar Keret - one of the most original and entertaining storytellers at work today.