- Published: 05/05/2016
- ISBN: 9781783780471
- 129x20mm
- 192 pages
The Seven Good Years
Etgar Keret
Translated by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger
Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitic remarks both real and imagined, and, perhaps most worrisome of all, a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to chase him to the grave. Emerging from these darkly absurd circumstances is a series of funny, tender ruminations on everything from his three-year-old son’s impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind Angry Birds.
Moving deftly between the personal and the political, the playful and the profound, The Seven Good Years takes a life-affirming look at the human need to find good in the least likely places, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our capricious world.
£8.99
Comic, surreal and disorientating... Close in spirit to Woody Allen, these 36 pin-sharp snapshots of life temper nervous comedy with aching tenderness
Boyd Tonkin, Independent
I am very happy that Etgar and his work are in the world, making things better
George Saunders
The work of a writer coming to maturity... comic [and] self-deprecating
Alice O’Keefe, Guardian
From the Same Author
Fly Already
Etgar Keret, translated by Sondra Silverston,Jessica Cohen,Miriam Shlesinger,Nathan Englander,Yardenne Greenspan
Winner of the 2018 Sapir Prize.
You need to bribe someone into giving you weed? Don’t worry, just step into this court room and call the defendant a murderer. You’re a rich, lonely man and you want the joy of company? Don’t worry, just buy up people’s birthdays, and you’ll have friends calling every day. You need to get girls into bed? Don’t worry, your writer friend will write you a very persuasive story. You’re standing on the edge of a very high building, with all of your wretched sorrows? Don’t worry, fly already!
In these 22 short stories, wild capers reveal painful emotional truths, and the bizarre is just another name for the familiar. Wickedly funny and thrillingly smart, Fly Already is a collage of absurdity, despair and love, written by veteran commentator on the circus farce that is life.
Etgar Keret on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Israel in 600 Words or Less
Etgar Keret
‘My mind contains a lot of good answers to bad questions’
Etgar Keret on the impossibility of representing a nation.
In Conversation | The Online Edition
Etgar Keret | Interview
Etgar Keret & Sophie Lewis
‘Usually my wife makes fun of me.’
Fiction | The Online Edition
Car Concentrate
Etgar Keret
‘Women mostly touch it tentatively with the backs of their hands.’
