Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan and now lives in Tel Aviv. A winner of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, he is a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the author, most recently, of the memoir The Seven Good Years and story collections like The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among many other publications, and on This American Life, where he is a regular contributor.
“Etgar Keret is a genius...” —New York Times
"A brilliant writer...completely unlike any writer I know. The
voice of the next generation." —Salman Rushdie
“One of my favorite Israeli writers.” —John Green
“Etgar’s stories are a reminder of that rude intangible that often
goes unspoken in creative writing workshops: a great work of art is
often just residual evidence of a great human soul. 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
“Terrific… As funny, as dark, and somehow as sweet as his
fiction.” —David Remnick
“At once funny and profound, The Seven Good Years is a
gem. Etgar Keret approaches memoir the way he does fiction—from
surprising angles, with a sly wit, and bracing frankness. Read him,
and the world will never look the same again.” —Claire
Messud
“I don’t know how Etgar Keret does it, but he can turn anything
into a brilliant story. The Seven Good Years is full of
them, and they happen to be true, and full of love, kindness,
wisdom, humor and stuff I long for as a reader but cannot quite
name. Keret’s writing is soul-healing.” —Aleksandar Hemon
“Being a father, having a father—Etgar Keret is the man in the
middle and he captures the job just brilliantly.” —Roddy
Doyle
“Hilarious, brilliant, poignant, magically economical in its
language, marvelously generous in its approach to the world, this
book is like its author: genius.” —Ayelet Waldman
“When I first read Etgar's stories, I wondered what was wrong with
him—had his mother smoked crack while pregnant? Was he dropped on
his head as an infant?—until I met him, and grew to know him, and
realized his problem was much worse than I had ever imagined: he is
a terribly caring human being in a terribly uncaring universe.
Basically, he's fucked.” —Shalom Auslander
"Etgar Keret is #1 writer in Israel and #2 in my heart (after my
dachshund Felix).” —Gary Shteyngart
“Etgar Keret’s stories are funny, with tons of feeling,
driving towards destinations you never see coming. They’re written
in the most unpretentious, chatty voice possible, but they’re also
weirdly poetic. They stick in your gut. You think about them for
days.” – Ira Glass, host and producer of This American
Life
“If I could get you to read one writer, it would be Etgar Keret.
His impossible blend of humor and tragedy, cynicism and empathy as
well as big-hearted narratives that occupy the tiniest of page
counts make him one of my favorites. Maybe one of yours.” —The Los
Angeles Times
“Exhilarating… For Keret, the creative impulse resides not in a
conscious devotion to the classic armature of fiction (character,
plot, theme, etc.) but in an allegiance to the anarchic
instigations of the subconscious. His best stories display a kind
of irrepressible dream logic.” —Steve Almond, New York Times
“Etgar Keret possesses an imagination not easily slotted into
conventional literary categories. His very short stories might be
described as Kafkaesque parables, magic-realist knock-knock jokes
or sad kernels of cracked cosmic wisdom.” – A.O. Scott, New York
Times
“[Keret’s writing] testifies to the power of the surreal, the
concise and the fantastic… [O]blique, breezy, seriocomic fantasies
that defy encapsulation, categorization and even summary.”
—Washington Post
“It's astonishing what he can do in just two pages: go from funny
to bizarre to touching to satiric to meta to surprising and
surreal… [A] master storyteller, creating deep, tragic, funny,
painful tales with scarcely more words than you've read in this
review.” —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times
"Keret’s writing is unwaveringly funny and light, making it the
perfect easy read for a plane or train ride." —Vogue
"Spare wry… Without overplaying any single aspect of a complicated
life in complicated times in a complicated place, Keret’s lovely
memoir retains its essential human warmth, demonstrating that with
memoirs, less can often be more." – Publishers
Weekly (STARRED review)
"Clever, witty, and wise." —Esquire
“Etgar Keret's The Seven Good Years examines the absurdity,
fragility and unpredictability of life… in true Keret style, it
promises to be both poignant and uproariously funny.” —Chicago
Tribune
“Keret’s unrivalled voice really shines, offering startling
revelations, wry humor, and notes of grace…. [A] quiet dread
sometimes seethes just beneath small moments, offbeat incidents,
and strange dreams. Always on display is Keret’s astonishing
capacity to transform even the pettiest of quotidian inconveniences
(such as a delayed flight) into exuberant flights of fancy and
realization. His voice is truly incomparable…. The Seven Good Years
sparkles with humor and poignant wisdom, rendering wonderful
immersions into Keret’s inner landscape, the gentle and deeply
affecting ways that both strangers and loved ones stir his
compassionate imagination.” – The Forward
“Keret’s deadpan tales, collected in such books as “Suddenly, a
Knock on the Door” (2012) and “The Girl on the Fridge” (2008),
often blur the line between the real and the surreal… This unusual
perspective makes Keret’s new autobiography especially intriguing…
the book brings together his engagingly cockeyed observations on a
variety of subjects, from his disparate family to run-ins with
cabdrivers and pushy moms at the park.” —Washington Post
“Keret calls it a memoir but it's really a TARDIS — a time machine
that does two kinds of magic at once. First, it takes us back
through seven years of Keret's history, showing us the world (its
beauty, madness, and inescapable strangeness) through his sharp and
sympathetic observations. It's not an overtly political book, but
one defined by violence, bookended by life and death.” —NPR
"It’s no surprise that The Seven Good Years – Etgar Keret’s first
foray into non-fiction – is extraordinary. Imbued with all of its
writer’s familiar innocence, cynicism, wonder, nuance and insight,
these essays – spanning a period from the birth of his son to the
death of his beloved father – are, like his stories, very short,
deceptively accessible, and utterly brilliant. It is a rare
three-page piece that can move a reader to tears, but Keret does it
without effort, and brings unexpected tears of laughter a moment
later. Fellow polymath Clive James has called him 'one of our most
important writers alive,' and it’s no overstatement. For fans of
his five best-selling short-story collections, this latest offering
will be a delight; for new readers, I can’t think of a better
entrée into Keret’s work" —Francesca Segal, Jewish Chronicle
"[F]antastical, funny, and often heartbreaking." —The Rumpus
“A bittersweet memoir… captures the time between the birth of his
son to the death of his Holocaust survivor father, years of
contentment punctuated by air-raid sirens and jam 'sour with
memories.'” —Vogue.com
“Reviewing Etgar Keret’s new volume of mini-memoirs poses something
of a pleasant conundrum: What can you add to the reading world when
you’ve just turned the final page of a book in which a writer has
managed to say so much, so movingly, so concisely, and so
entertainingly?...Keret brings the same surreal edge and
black-as-pitch humor to these nonfictional musings as he does to
his short stories… [His] writing exudes an intimate friendliness,
as though he’s bantering with you, one-on-one.” —Boston Globe
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