Short Story Collections
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.
Book by El-Youssef, Samir, Keret, Etgar
From Israel's most popular and acclaimed young writer―"Stories that are short, strange, funny, deceptively casual in tone and affect, stories that sound like a joke but aren't" (Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi ) Already featured on This American Life and Selected Shorts and in Zoetrope: All Story and L.A. Weekly , these short stories include a man who finds equal pleasure in his beautiful girlfriend and the fat, soccer-loving lout she turns into after dark; shrinking parents; a case of impotence cured by a pet terrier; and a pessimistic Middle Eastern talking fish. A bestseller in Israel, The Nimrod Flipout is an extraordinary collection from the preeminent Israeli writer of his generation.
Etgar Keret’s stories are quick, brief and precise — unhesitatingly moving. They are also hilarious and off-the-wall, yet dark, sometimes violent, and often intensely poignant: a powerful new collection from Israel’s best-selling author.
Read the stories that made Etgar Keret Israel's most popular and acclaimed young writer with The Girl on the Fridge. A birthday-party magician whose hat tricks end in horror and gore; a girl parented by a major household appliance; the possessor of the lowest IQ in the Mossad―such are the denizens of Etgar Keret's dark and fertile mind. The Girl on the Fridge contains the best of Keret's first collections, the ones that made him a household name in Israel and the major discovery of this last decade.
This booklet includes a lecture called Second Generation and four remarkable short stories by Etgar Keret: Asthma Attack, Shoes, Siren, and Foreign Language, the last of which has never before appeared in the United States. Openly discussing his family background for the first time, Keret brings to life the confused experience of growing up as an Israeli child of Holocaust survivors. One of Israel s leading voices in literature and cinema, Keret mixes wry humor, keen intelligence, and subtle tenderness to create some of the most provocative and entertaining stories of his generation.
A dark and surreal collection of stories from the author of The Nimrod Flipout and The Girl on the Fridge. With Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, "It's tempting to say," according to Jonathan Safran Foer, "[these stories] are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact they are his most Keretesque." Bringing up a child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar Keret's short story collection, daily life is complicated, dangerous, and full of yearning. In his most playful and most mature work yet, the living and the dead, silent children and talking animals, dreams and waking life coexist in an uneasy world. Overflowing with absurdity, humor, sadness, and compassion, the tales in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door establish Etgar Keret―declared a "genius" by The New York Times ―as one of the most original writers of his generation.
From a "genius" ( New York Times ) storyteller: a new, subversive, hilarious, heart-breaking collection. "There is sweetheartedness and wisdom and eloquence and transcendence in his stories because these virtues exist in abundance in Etgar himself... I am very happy that Etgar and his work are in the world, making things better." --George Saunders There's no one like Etgar Keret. His stories take place at the crossroads of the fantastical, searing, and hilarious. His characters grapple with parenthood and family, war and games, marijuana and cake, memory and love. These stories never go to the expected place, but always surprise, entertain, and move . . . In "Arctic Lizard," a young boy narrates a post-apocalyptic version of the world where a youth army wages an unending war, rewarded by collecting prizes. A father tries to shield his son from the inevitable in "Fly Already." In "One Gram Short," a guy just wants to get a joint to impress a girl and ends up down a rabbit hole of chaos and heartache. And in the masterpiece "Pineapple Crush," two unlikely people connect through an evening smoke down by the beach, only to have one of them imagine a much deeper relationship. The thread that weaves these pieces together is our inability to communicate, to see so little of the world around us and to understand each other even less. Yet somehow, in these pages, through Etgar's deep love for humanity and our hapless existence, a bright light shines through and our universal connection to each other sparks alive.
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.