Typical Keret, an edgy, irreverent, absurdist, and at times surreal collection of short stories that examine the human condition.

if you like your short stories to be clever and witty with inventive narrative twists, then Keret is your man. originality and humour will always grab the attention of your reader but will it sustain them? whilst i admire all of these qualities in Keret's writing they also left me strangely dissatisfied, and this feeling only increased the further i made my way through this collection. i like warmth, depth, insight in my fiction not narrative word games which, rather than draw the reader into a

Reading Etgar Keret is refreshing for me because he embodies much of what's good about Israeli literature without too much of the baggage. Now, I adore the likes of Amos Oz, David Grossman, AB Yehoshua (to an extent), Yoram Kaniuk, Aharon Appelfield, and the like, but sometimes their respective works can be so heavy, thick with the angst and long suffering neuroses and obsessions of the Jewish people. It can be a distinct drag, man. This isn't to say that Keret's work is free of these descriptor...

I LOVE this book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!My very favorite short story is:"What Do We Have in Our Pockets"I also wanted to cry in "What Animal are You"?I had a very challenging time understanding "SHUT". I read it 4 times --- (I 'think' I get it)....lol"Creative Writing", "Unzipping", "Suddenly A Knock On the Door", "Upgrade".....etc. etc. etc.......These SHORT stories are funny and sad -playful & mature -loving and insightful -strange -fresh- sweet- unpretentious -and a little like sticky-taffy-c...

Now this is a weird case... I really liked some of these stories. I also disliked some of them but, you know, that's often the case with short story collections. I've read like 3/4 of the book & I had to return it to the library today. I could borrow it again but... I don't feel like it? Some of the stories were smart, funny, fun to read, yes. But I never loved them. They are easily forgettable, too. So I'll just leave it at that.

Etgar Keret became known to me in 2008 when I happened across an excellent interview with him in a 2006 edition of The Believer. I liked what he had to say in that piece, so I picked up a book of his stories (The Nimrod Flipout: Stories). His style of writing was a marked difference from so many of the MFA graduate story writers that I had come to enjoy and respect - that differentiation was a good thing. Some of his stories are three pages, two pages long. His ability to write a handful of para...

“Tell Me A Story” opens this book of short stories, as a writer called Etgar Keret is forced at gunpoint to make up a story on the spot by a home invader. As more characters are introduced – a survey taker, a pizza delivery man, all of whom turn up at his door in succession like in a sitcom – each of them enter his flat, pull out a weapon and demand a story. This sense of playfulness and originality runs through a lot of the short stories in Keret’s latest collection, “Suddenly, A Knock On The D...

I’ve been wanting to read more works by Etgar Keret ever since I finished The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that this particular collection had a lot more short stories that resonated with me than the aforementioned one.Exuding a rare combination of depth and accessibility, Keret's tales overflow with absurdity, humour, longing and compassion, and though their circumstances are often strange and surreal, his characters are defined by a fa...

Brilliant, mind-stretchingly imaginative, funny, sad, wonderful stories that sparkle so brightly your psyche lights up.The last book I read, Bernie Sanders's Our Revolution , concluded by saying something very profound: that as a species, we are suffering from a lack of imagination. What he was referring to was our inability to imagine the real possibility of creating, ourselves, a new way of living. There is something so orderly about going from reading Our Revolution to Suddenly, A Knock on...

Etgar Keret can do more in three or four pages than many short story writers can in stories that border on novellas. There are nearly three dozen stories that span just 188 pages, yet many are simply brilliant.The eponymous and first story starts with a directive: “Tell me a story.” Under gunpoint, the narrator – Etgar – is ordered to make up a story. He is interrupted early on: “That’s not a story…That’s an eyewitness report. It’s exactly what’s happening here and now. Exactly what we’re trying...

More like 3 1/2 *.Some stories I liked very much, some were mhh just ok. :)My favourite Keret ever remains Kneller's Happy Campers and I urge you all to read it. Such a charming (short) book!

So often I read a short story and feel like, you know, what was the point of that story? Like there's something to get that I'm just not getting, because maybe I'm a fool, or maybe I'm just not very deep, or, if I'm feeling confident at the time of the reading, maybe the author didn't actually know what he or she was doing.Not this book of very, very short stories, though. These were funny, sad, interesting, and they wrapped up in a satisfying way. I'm sure different ones stick with different pe...

Judging by all the 4&5 star reviews, I was clearly missing something here, as for me this began as a huge disappointment.Unlike the glowing reviews on the back cover, I didn't see much maturity on display here, more the opposite in fact. Neither was the authors renowned humour apparent, although many stories began like the start of a good joke - "A man and his son walk into an acupuncturists' treatment room", they invariably ended like bad ones, with no punch line. "There's nothing stranger than...

Wow, what a ride! Loved it.Wildly inventive. It's like literary Silly Putty that's been smushed up against color comics, peeled off and then stretched and pulled. It kind of looks the same as the real thing but is weirdly distorted. In a way that is more interesting and alive than the original. And then it makes you smile.

This has been on my to-read list since I finished The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories a while back. Great stories, some shorter than short, but most deep with meaning. Many are also set in and around Israel, the author's home.I read the audio book version of this, voiced by a star-studded cast (listed below). Mostly I paused between stories for thought - this is not a collection to be read in one sitting. My two favorites were probably "Joseph" and "Lieland". Recommended!"Suddenl...

What kind of short stories are these?That's a good question. For one thing, they are short short stories. Most of them are two to four pages long. There are 35 short stories in 185 pages. A story is over before you know what hit you.They may be fables. I just looked up the definition. But not in the sense of "etiology"--explaining why things are the way they are, as in Aesop's. They're not allegories with some hidden meaning. Parables? Maybe, in that they do touch on morality, but, again, is tha...

Etgar Keret, who I've been lucky enough to hear speak in an intimate setting, is a surrealist. He's an expert at taking the mundane and making it extraordinary. Keret, an Israeli Jew who often draws ire from the Israeli right for his leftist political views and criticism of Israel's policy against Palestinians, is a charming man who loves to shock. When he was speaking to my group, he talked about his crazy dad's relationships with prostitutes and the mafia in Italy after surviving the Holocaust...

Heaven and Hell(view spoiler)[LielandRobbie is a seasoned liar. Whether it be a blind aunt, an aunt with cancer, a niece beaten up by her husband, or a paralyzed dog that had been run over, Robbie made up excuses in a flash when he was two hours late for work, went AWOL in the army, or was vegging out at the beach when he was a student. “Lies without arms, lies that were ill, lies that did harm, lies that could kill. Lies on foot, or behind the wheel, black-tie lies, and lies that could steal.”A...

#7 Favourite Read of 2012My only previous experience with Keret was the brilliant and beautiful movie Wristcutters: A Love Story based on his novella Kneller's Happy Campers so when this brand new collection of short stories was offered to me by a local bookseller I had no hesitation in buying it.And I am so glad I did, as it was a revelation, completely unlike anything else I've read. His stories are often strange and slightly fantastical, funny, dark, impressive and affecting. This is a seriou...

i've just finished reading this book. this is stories collection by one of my fav author, an israeli writer named etgar keret. i love his stories; they're very very short and hit right on the spot, like a bullet shot by a world's number one sniper. his stories are funny, too. you can find a glimpse of israel's culture here, and the war. and also, love stories. i love it when he writes love stories. they make you feel hurt, but then they heal you with their comforting words. that is etgar keret w...