Etgar Keret
A temporary guest in the world - "Haaretz" review of Keret's new bookWriting a short story is a work of art: In its density it does not tolerate any free time nor is it capable of bearing the superfluous. With Keret, there is never a moment's pause and there is nothing extra. He has no obligations, in the liberating and creative sense of the concept; he enhances the art of the short story.
ראיון וידאו אצל קרת במרפסת - ynetביקרנו את אתגר קרת בחדר העבודה שלו במרכז תל אביב, שמענו ממנו על חרדות מהמוות, נחשפנו לאוסף הצעצועים שלו וגילינו למה רצוי שאף אחד לא יהיה בסביבה כשהוא כותב
פתאום דפיקה בדלת של אתגר קרת הוא ספר איכותי ונדיר, שבו שינה קרת את כתיבתו כדי לחקור את מה שהעיתונים לא יודעים להגיד לנו על האלימות בחיינו
לאחר שהחקיינים התאדו מהשטח, חוזר אתגר קרת להנחית זבנגים תמציתיים ב"פתאום דפיקה בדלת". זה אמנם לא חף מבעיות, אבל בוודאי יספק את המעריצים
מתוך "פתאום דפיקה בדלת", קובץ הסיפורים החדש של אתגר קרת
Hd.se: "Hilarious revelations"A review of "Goda intentioner" (good intentions) - a new collection of short stories by Etgar Keret translated to the Swedish language
Голосовать Этгар Керет
Russian speaking Etgar Keret fans, please vote for him at the "Reading St. Petersburg 2009: choose the best foreign writer" poll (Читающий Петербург 2009: выбираем лучшего зарубежного писателя).
In a booknik.ru article about Vladimir Mayakovsky's "Reading St. Petersburg 2009" project, they say Keret is doing pretty well so far in the polls, but of course it's too early to tell the outcome.
If you're a Russian speaking fan of Etgar Keret, it's a good time to show your support. If you are not yet familiar with Russian translations of his stories, you can listen to two of them: Разбить поросенка (Breaking the pig), and Лето 76-го (The summer of '76), and hopefully you'll become a fan too.
Photo by Simon (at a book reading in Moscow, November 2009)
WNYC - Selected Shorts: Strange But True: Aimee Bender and Etgar Keret (July 26, 2009)A special evening at Symphony Space celebrated the startling fiction of two young authors, the American Aimee Bender, and the Israeli Etgar Keret.
[Download MP3] [Listen online]
Nominees Announced for the 2009 Shirley Jackson AwardsCOLLECTION
A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
More about the Shirley Jackson awards for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic" at wikipedia
Books: In short - Times Online"[Kneller's Happy Campers] is like nothing else"
January Magazine: Best Books of 2008: Fiction
Writers have a particular challenge when trying to create believable plot and characters in stories which typically range from just a few sentences to a few pages. How do you reduce a universe of meaning to something the size of a breadbox? Etgar Keret makes it look so easy
Four Questions with Neal Stephenson
SXSW: Who are you reading?
Neal Stephenson: Whenever I'm given one of these opportunities, I put in a word for the late David Foster Wallace, who I think was one of the best we had. Anyone who is looking for something great to read, a big novel type experience, should look at Infinite Jest. Also, Etgar Keret, an Israeli writer of very short stories who I admire very much because I can't write short fiction. This is a great honour.
Audio interview with Keret at Christofer Lydon's "Open Source Radio" (Brown university).
Constant Reader ("The Stranger", Seatle):
In his most recent book to be translated to English, The Girl on the Fridge, there are almost 50 stories packed into 171 pages, but this isn't the typical, unsatisfying flash fiction; in stories of three pages or less, Keret unveils little universes of weirdness and sorrow, but unlike, say, Carver's stories, they don't feel like they were written 30 years ago.
NY Times reviews "the girl on the fridge"
“And Michal — she’s the prettiest girl in the school, probably — came by and she said we were all disgusting and like animals, and I barfed but not because of her.” Keret often punctuates his stories with this type of upsetting but also vaguely funny ending. When these final sentences hit, they hit hard, like literary afterburners that push the stories deeper into your gut.
Etgar Keret is the winner of the 2008 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize for his imaginative and mischievous collection of short stories, Missing Kissinger (Chatto & Windus). The 41-year-old Israeli writer and film-maker triumphed over Tom Segev, Philip Davis and Philippe Grimbert, and wins £4,000
"The Girl on the Fridge" on Richard Rayner's shortlist (LA Times)
The prose zips, the effects unsettle -- Keret is himself something of a magician, and what he pulls from his hat feels lively indeed.
Heeb Magazine: Things Fall Apart
Though rooted in ordinary events—birthday parties, traffic jams—and told in straightforward, unadorned prose, the fantastic inevitably creeps in, leaving his stories with a strange foreboding. Such is the case in “Hat Trick,” in which an unwitting magician starts pulling severed rabbits and headless babies out of his hat to the delight of his underage audience; or “Crazy Glue,” in which a marital dispute is solved when the woman pastes herself to the ceiling with super glue. This surrealism, coupled with glib narration, belies how serious a writer Keret is and how dark his subject matter. This does not mean that the author’s bizarre scenes won’t make you laugh—they will—but just as often, that laughter will get stuck in your throat
"The Girl on the Fridge" is out.
Here's a couple of reviews:
Village Voice
By his own metric, Keret (whose last collection was The Nimrod Flipout) is the raging asthmatic of short-fiction writers, his words chosen and few, his stories issued with the urgency of an inhaler's blast.San Diego Union-Tribune
Rarely are stories as economical as Keret's, and rarely are economical stories as affecting as these. Keret, an Israeli writer whose work has been featured on “This American Life” and “Selected Shorts,” explores the nature of violence and alienation from a surreal, whimsical perspective in writings that rarely exceeds five pages in length. Even the most impatient reader has time for these quick reads.
Etgar Keret's page at ITHL (Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature).
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