Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

Publishers Weekly

In this slim volume of flash fiction and short stories, Israeli author/filmmaker Keret (The Nimrod Flipout; the film Jellyfish) writes with alternating Singeresque magical realism and Kafkaesque absurdity, to mixed effect. Bookended by cautionary tales of writers at work—the title story and “What Animal Are You?”—this collection often takes characters beyond their comfort zones into scenarios of twisted reality. In “Ari,” a man suspects that everyone named Ari is after him. In “Bad Karma,” an insurance salesman tries to recover from being struck by the body of a suicidal jumper. In the longest and most satisfying story, “Surprise Party,” three strangers are the only guests at a celebration from which the guest of honor is strangely absent, and then they help the man’s wife search for him, concerned that he may have suicidal or homicidal tendencies. Many of Keret’s stories are literary doodles; others seem to be concepts in search of a few good characters. Readers tuned in to the author’s narrow-band broadcast will be pleased. Agent: Anna Stein, Aitken Alexander, on behalf of Nilli Cohen at the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. (Apr.)

Kyle Smith

Keret can do more with six . . . paragraphs than most writers can with 600 pages.
— People

Library Journal

Israeli author Keret writes sometimes appealingly wacky, sometimes darkly absurdist stories that translate well to America. He's had pieces in Harper's Magazine and the Paris Review and has been featured on NPR. Sophisticated readers should check this out.

Library Journal

From Israeli author Keret (The Nimrod Flipout), these stories take the world by storm and by stealth, in equal parts and everything in between. The title piece is a Three Stooges-like approach to the absurdities of writing; belligerent strangers are continually knocking on the writer's door demanding stories. In "Lieland," the author sets up a moral conundrum of a universe where the lies we tell are made real, while "What of this Goldfish Would You Wish" examines life through the lens of a wish-granting goldfish. "Polite Little Boy" is achingly direct, while "The Story" and "Victorious parts I and II" sassily advocate for themselves with the reader. The stories range from comic to droll to a nether state of complex poignancy; Keret's irreverent, unfettered imagination is truly stunning as he gives voice with equal aplomb to hemorrhoids and guavas while maintaining a wicked edge by wavering to extremes. VERDICT Story meets aphorism meets Zen koan with a liberal dose of humor and a blindingly sharp grasp of the impossible possibilities of the human condition. Art truly fashioned from words; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 9/23/11.]—Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos P.L., CA

Kirkus Reviews

Stories about storytelling from a young Israeli author. With stories this short (many are a paragraph or two or a page or two, making the 22 pages of the penultimate "Surprise Party" feel like an epic), every word counts, so it's quite possible that something has been lost in the translation (with no slight intended to the three translators credited, including noted author Nathan Englander). However these stories might read differently in Hebrew, and signify something different within a different cultural context, they function like fables and parables, fairy tales and jokes, with goldfish that grant wishes, parallel universes, an insurance agent who suffers (and then prospers) from his own lack of insurance, a woman who mourns her miscarriage with a creative-writing course (with her husband becoming jealous of the instructor and responding by writing his own revelatory stories). Bookending the collection are two stories featuring a writer as protagonist, a first-person narrator that the reader is invited to identify as the author, who is being forced to perform the act of writing for the benefit of others. The first, the title story, finds him coerced to create at gunpoint, conjuring a plot that proceeds to transpire within the story as he takes some pleasure from "creating something out of something." The final story, "What Animal Are You?," shows the self-conscious writer being filmed for a TV feature as he's in the process of writing (or at least simulating it), wondering whether a hooker might seem more natural on camera as his wife than his wife does. His pieces elicit comparison to sources as diverse as Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut and Woody Allen. He also recalls Lydia Davis in his compression and Donald Barthelme in his whimsy. Yet the stories are hit-and-miss, some of them slight or obvious, though the suggestion that "in the end, everyone gets the Hell or the Heaven he deserves" might be a fantasy that readers will wish were true. More like bits and sketches than stories, from a writer who is often very funny and inventive, and occasionally profound.

Steve Almond

Reduced to their outlines…these [stories] 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…[Keret]'s most effective when he strips away the constraints of realism and gives rein to his subversive imagination.
—The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

“I feel that the best thing that can happen to a writer is for someone to interpret your text. It is a great experience, listening to your words.” – Etgar Keret

“An all-star roster of narrators masterfully performs the audio edition of Keret’s latest collection, which mixes humor, emotion, absurdity, morality, and humility…the result is a truly inspired series of performances and an utterly entertaining audiobook. Listening quickly becomes a compulsion.” – Publishers Weekly

“Examples of the talented narrators include Josh Charles, who has a deep, round tone and a gentle manner that perfectly complements the author’s words, and Adam Thirlwell’s British accent, which supports a strong, robust reading about lying. It’s an excellent audio and literary experience.” – AudioFile Magazine

“Keret’s greatest book yet—the most funny, dark, and poignant. It’s tempting to say these stories are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact they are his most Keretesque.” —Jonathan Safran Foer

“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

“Strangeness abounds. Keret fits so much psychological and social complexity and metaphysical mystery into these quick, wry, jolting, funny, off-handedly fabulist miniatures, they’re like literary magic tricks: no matter how closely you read, you can’t figure out how he does it.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (March 15)

“His pieces elicit comparison to sources as diverse as Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut and Woody Allen . . . [Keret is] a writer who is often very funny and inventive, and occasionally profound.” —Kirkus Reviews (March 15)

“Israeli author Keret writes sometimes appealingly wacky, sometimes darkly absurdist stories that translate well to America . . . Sophisticated readers should check this out.” —Library Journal, pre-pub alert

“In this slim volume of flash fiction and short stories, Israeli author/filmmaker Keret (The Nimrod Flipout; the film Jellyfish) writes with alternating Singeresque magical realism and Kafkaesque absurdity.” —Publishers Weekly

“This collection of short stories brims with invention . . . Etgar Keret is a great short story writer whose work is all the greater because it’s funny . . . [He] most becomes himself in comedy shorts, telling tales of the absurd and the surreal . . . As one of the 20th century’s great comic writers—and one of Keret’s true precursors—might have said, so it goes . . . To complain about Keret being Keret is like complaining about Chekhov being Chekhov.” —Ian Sansom, The Guardian

“[Keret] deserves full marks for chutzpah . . . His work zings with imaginative conceits, clever asides and self-conscious twists. Yet there is also an easygoing quality to his writing that makes the 37 stories collected here instantly likeable . . . his stories assume an anecdotal style that gives them an air of spontaneity, as if he were relating them over a cup of coffee in one of the Tel Aviv cafes frequented by his characters . . . Keret’s willingness to develop quirky concepts (one story features a magic, talking goldfish) would seem to grant him a place alongside such idiosyncratic writers as Robert Walser, Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut and Italo Calvino. But if his work is sometimes reminiscent of these writers, it also carves out its own territory.” —James Ley, The Sydney Morning Herald

“A brilliant writer . . . completely unlike any writer I know. The voice of the next generation.” —Salman Rushdie

“Keret can do more with six . . .paragraphs than most writers can with 600 pages.” —Kyle Smith, People