Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories

Etgar Keret

Macmillan, Mar 27, 2012 - Fiction - 189 pages

Bringing up a child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar Keret's new collection, daily life is complicated, dangerous, and full of yearning. In his most playful and most mature work yet, the living and the dead, silent children and talking animals, dreams and waking life coexist in an uneasy world. Overflowing with absurdity, humor, sadness, and compassion, the tales in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door establish Etgar Keret—declared a "genius" by The New York Times—as one of the most original writers of his generation.

Contents

• Suddenly a Knock on the Door: 3
• Lieland: 9
• Cheesus Christ: 20
• Simyon: 25
• Shut: 31
• Healthy Start: 34
• Teamwork: 40
• Pudding: 47
• Unzipping: 51
• The Polite Little Boy: 54
• Mystique: 58
• Creative Writing: 60
• Snot: 66
• Grab the Cuckoo by the Tail: 69
• Pick a Color: 76
• Black and Blue: 80
• What Do We Have in Our Pockets?: 87
• Bad Karma: 89
• Ari: 99
• Bitch: 103
• The Story Victorious: 106
• A Good One: 109
• What of This Goldfish Would You Wish?: 117
• Not Completely Alone: 124
• One Step Beyond: 127
• Big Blue Bus: 133
• Hemorrhoid: 140
• September All Year Long: 142
• Joseph: 146
• Mourners Meal: 149
• Parallel Universes: 153
• Upgrade: 155
• Guava: 160
• Surprise Party: 163
• What Animal Are You?: 185
• Translation Acknowledgments: 189

About the author

Etgar Keret was born on August 20, 1967 in Israel. He is an Israeli-Polish writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television. He is a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, and at Tel Aviv University. Keret's first published work was Pipelines, a collection of short stories. His second book, Missing Kissinger, a collection of fifty very short stories, caught the attention of the general public. He has also co-authored several comic books, among them Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Fun with Rutu Modan and Streets of Fury with Asaf Hanuka. In 1998, Keret published Kneller's Happy Campers, He also wrote a children's book Dad Runs Away with the Circus. In 2016 his title The Seven Good Years made the New Zealand Best Seller List.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories
• Author: Etgar Keret
• Translated by: Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, Nathan Englander
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2012
• ISBN: 0374533334, 9780374533335
• Length: 189 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Short Stories (single author); Literary Collections / Essays