EK News

Paris Review interview

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:15:19 GMT

I think I’m controversial among some of the people in Israel and accepted by others, but the same can also be said for evolutionary theory.

-- Paris Review interview

Guardian Books podcast

Sat, 05 May 2012 13:50:59 GMT

"Jeet Thayil and Etgar Keret ... push fiction out of the comfort zone"

Guardian Books podcast

Shelfari interview

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:53:33 GMT

I think the world is changing, and these changes can actually improve the situation of the short story. But I don't think that publishers have internalized it.

-- Shelfari interview

Listen to keret on NPR Boston's "On Point"

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:45:00 GMT

Listen to Etgar Keret at Tom Ashbrook's On Point

Monday, 7PM (SF time): Watch Keret (and Michael Chabon) live

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:44:57 GMT

Keret's USA tour opens on Monday (April 23^rd) 7PM (PDT) at a JCCSF evening hosted by Michael Chabon.
If you can't attend the event, you'll still be able to watch it live.

Globe and Mail review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:20:13 GMT

"Anything can happen, and always does. It’s very scary, and also exhilarating. This you know, too: For all the terrible things that happen, humiliations and deaths by running over by scooter, life with Keret is very, very, appallingly funny."

-- Stephen Smith, Saturday's Globe and Mail

NPR review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:15:35 GMT

"Keret is funny, snarly, profane and so contemporary that if he used more brand names you might accuse him of being Pop art."

-- Minna Proctor, NPR

SF Bay Guardian interview

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:44:27 GMT

For me, the term "writing routine" sounds like an oxymoron. It is a bit like saying "having-a-once-in-a-lifetime-insight-which-makes-you-want-to burst-into-tears routine." There has never been anything routine-like about writing for me.

-- SF Bay Guardian interview

Listen to stories from the audiobook

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:41:44 GMT

In the audiobook, you can listen to an all-star cast reading the book's 35 stories, as well as a bonus story read by Keret himself.
You can also listen to some of these stories on the web:

Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: read by Ira Glass
Mystique: read by Willem Dafoe
Creative Writing: read by Stanley Tucci
What, Of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?: read by Gary Shteyngart
September All Year Long: read by Neal Stephenson

NY Times review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:17:50 GMT

"Reduced to their outlines, plots like [Keret's] can sound gimmicky. But Keret alights upon protagonists in the midst of psychic upheaval, willing to embrace the bizarre twists that deliver them to their appointed grace or ruin. The humor in their travails arises not from an effort to charm the reader but to confront the darkness that shadows our human folly."

-- Steve Almond, New York Times

TimeOut New York review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:00:41 GMT

Update: turns out this is also available online

Matthew Love,
TimeOut New York

HuffPo talks about "Suddenly"

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:45:30 GMT

Huffington Post summarizes "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door".

Stanley Tucci reads "Creative Writing"

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:43:40 GMT

The Audiobook of "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door" is out soon. EW's Shelf Life has obtained an exclusive clip of Hunger Games and Julie & Julia star Stanley Tucci reading Keret’s story “Creative Writing” in his distinctively warm, wry voice.

Have a listen

Newsweek feature about "Suddenly"

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:38:44 GMT

Newsweek's Dan Ephron writes about "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door", and how it reflects the changes in Keret's life during the past decade.

LA Times review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:05:59 GMT

"Keret writes short fiction — often, very short. 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. There are 35 stories in this slender paperback, and sometimes they are just strange or sad or sweet enough to make you set the book down and walk away, to give them time to sink in."

-- Carolyn Kellogg, LA Times

Neal Stephenson reads Keret

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:22:20 GMT

Listen to Neal Stephenson reading Keret's "September All Year Long", and see who else participates in the "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door" audiobook.

Entertainment Weekly review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:02:26 GMT

"the author's emotions and ideas are teaspooned out in undiluted, well-measured doses guaranteed to put a dopey smile on your face during those 10 or 15 minutes until your train arrives."

-- Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly

Barnes & Noble Review interview

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:43:16 GMT

A few weeks ago my mother called my home while I was giving an interview. My wife told her I couldn't take her call because I was working, and my mother corrected her, saying that talking to somebody about yourself isn't exactly work.

"What happens next", Barnes and Noble Review

Keret on the Frank O'Connor award long list

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:28:35 GMT

Etgar Keret is on the 2012 long list of the Frank O'Connor international short story award

Bookmunch review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:50:51 GMT

"Keret, for me, really comes into his own, however, when he takes the reader on a journey whose end you could not possibly suspect in a million years. ‘One Step Beyond’, for instance, is worth the price of admission alone, concerning the personal hell constructed for a career assassin (for me, this story is the test – pick up this book, read this story – it’s on p196 – if you are not quite literally blown away, Keret is not for you)."

-- Bookmunch

Keret at Prairie Schooner podcast

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:25:12 GMT

Etgar Keret and ZZ Packer talk to Prairie Schooner's Scott Winter and Stacey Waite about what creative writing workshops achieve (or not).

Listen

Intelligent Life review: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door"

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:52:10 GMT

"part of the appeal of these stories is the unspooling and rewinding of a tale so offbeat that it’s a pleasant and often poignant surprise when the real world shows through."

-- Simon Willis, Intelligent Life Magazine (The Economist)

Etgar Keret has an official facebook page

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:21:50 GMT

Come say hi

About.com about "Suddenly"

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:13:59 GMT

"Israeli author Etgar Keret (The Nimrod Flipout) is in possession of one of the most wonderfully absurdist senses of humor I've ever had the pleasure to come in contact with. So I was thrilled to discover that he had a new collection of absurdist, magical realism-tinged short (often short short) stories, one of which, "Guava," you can READ RIGHT NOW at Electric Literature."

-- Mark Flanagan, about.com

More text and audio stories here and here.

Interview with The Observer

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 08:46:38 GMT

"One of the funniest stories in Keret's new collection is "Actually, I've Had Some Phenomenal Hard-Ons Lately", about a businessman who's having an affair with a colleague. The thing that satisfies the man most about this arrangement is that, when he takes his mistress for a "candlelit dinner", the cost is tax-deductible. Keret says the story was triggered by overhearing someone use the title phrase in a cafe.

"It struck me as such an amazing sentence. What's interesting is the word 'actually' and the word 'hard-on' used together. Because there's something about 'hard-on' that's so primal, so instinctive, while 'actually' is such a meta, linguistic kind of word." The resulting story was a kind of imaginative working out of this clash. "The cheating is the 'hard-on' bit, while the tax is the 'actually'," he explains."

-- William Skidelsky, The Obserever