Etgar Keret

Etgar Keret (born Ramat Gan, 1967) is an Israeli writer of short stories who is also known for his work as a television and film screenwriter and director. He writes in Hebrew and is regarded as one of the leading voices of contemporary Israeli fiction. His method is to use everyday speech to tell stories in which black humour, surrealism, the grotesque and the childlike sit side by side.

Keret was born in Ramat Gan to parents of Polish origin who had survived the Holocaust. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife, the filmmaker Shira Geffen, and their son, and teaches at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and at Tel Aviv University. His first book, Pipelines (1992), was largely ignored when it appeared. His second, Missing Kissinger (1994), a collection of fifty very short stories, brought him public attention. Since then he has published further story collections, graphic novels with illustrators such as Asaf Hanuka, children's books and a short novel, Pizzeria Kamikaze.

Keret has also worked in film and television. His first feature, Malka Lev Adom (1996), won the top award of the Israeli Academy of Film, and in 2007 Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife, received the Caméra d'Or at Cannes. Several of his stories have been adapted for the screen, and Wristcutters: A Love Story was based on his novella Kneller's Happy Campers.

His lean style, built on slang and everyday language, has influenced writers of his generation and helped revive the short story in Israel. His books have been translated into many languages, and in 2018 he received the Sapir Prize for Literature for the collection later published in English as Fly Already. His prose has also sparked debate: the linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann defended it against criticism from Menahem Zevi Kaddari, who had compared it unfavourably with the language of Agnon.