Etgar Keret

Etgar Keret (born August 20, 1967) is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels and scriptwriting for film and television.

Biography

Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan, Israel. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife, Shira Geffen, and their son, Lev. He is a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv University.

Literary career

Keret's first published work was "Tzinorot" ("Pipelines", 1992), a collection of short stories which was generally ignored. In 1993 he won the first prize in the Alternative Theater Festival in Akko for "Entebbe: A Musical" which he wrote with Jonathan Bar Giora. His second book, "Ga'aguai Le'Kissinger" ("Missing Kissinger", 1994), a collection of fifty very short stories, caught the attention of the general public. His short story "Siren", which deals with the paradoxes of modern Israeli society, is included in the curriculum for the Israeli bagrut examination in literature.

Keret has co-authored several comic books, among them "Lo Banu Lehenot" ("Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Fun", 1996) with Rutu Modan and "Simtaot Hazaam" ("Streets of Fury", 1997) with Asaf Hanuka. In 1999 five of his stories were translated into English, and adapted into "graphic novellas" under the joint title "Jetlag". The illustrators were the five members of the Actus Tragicus collective.

In 1998 Keret published "Ha'Keytana Shel Kneller" ("Kneller's Happy Campers"), a collection of short stories. The title story, the longest in the collection, follows a young man who commits suicide and goes on a quest for love in the afterlife. It appears in the English language collection of Keret's stories "The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories" (2004) and was also adapted into the graphic novel "Pizzeria Kamikaze" (2006), with illustrations by Asaf Hanuka. The story was also adapted by director Goran Dukic into a feature-length film called "" starring Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Tom Waits and Will Arnett. The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Keret's latest short story collection in Hebrew is "Anihu" ("I-am-him", 2002). Keret also wrote a children's book "Dad Runs Away with the Circus" (2004), illustrated by Rutu Modan.Keret publishes some of his works on the Hebrew-language web site "Bimah Hadashah" (New Stage).

Film and television

Keret has also worked in Israeli television and film, including three seasons as a writer for the popular sketch show "The Cameri Quintet" and the story for the TV movie "Aball'e" ("Daddy", 2001) starring Shmil Ben Ari. "Wristcutters: A Love Story", 2007 a dark comedy/love story was based on Keret's novella "Kneller's Happy Campers". "$9.99", a stop motion animated feature film, is scheduled to be released in 2008. Written by Keret and director Tatia Rosenthal, it is an Israeli/Australian co-production featuring the voices of Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia and other leading Australian actors.

Writing style

Keret's writing style is lean, utilizing everyday language, slang, and dialect. His work has influenced many writers of his generation,Fact|date=September 2008 as well as bringing a renewed surge in popularity for the short story form in Israel in the second half of the 1990s.

Awards

Keret has received the Prime Minister's award for literature, as well as the Ministry of Culture's Cinema Prize. In 2006 he was chosen as an outstanding artist of the prestigious Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation. The short film "Malka Lev Adom" ("Skin Deep", 1996) which Keret wrote and directed with Ran Tal, won an Israel Film Academy award and first place in the Munich International Festival of Film Schools. The film "Jellyfish", a joint venture for Keret and his wife received the Camera d'Or prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

Criticism

A review of "Missing Kissinger" describes Etgar Keret's locale as that of "male confusion, loneliness, blundering, bellowing and, above all, stasis. His narrator is trapped in an angry masculine wistfulness which is awful to behold in its masturbatory disconnection from the world's real possibilities and pleasures." Etgar is "not much of a stylist - you get the impression that he throws three or four of these stories off on the bus to work every morning," and his "wild, blackly inventive pieces...might have been dreamed up by a mad scientist rather than a writer." [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/mar/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview21]

Works published in English

hort story collections

* "The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories", New York, Toby Press, 2004, ISBN 1-59264-105-9 (paperback). ::Includes "Kneller's Happy Campers" and others.
* "The Nimrod Flipout", Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006, ISBN 0-374-22243-6 (paperback).::Selections from Keret's four short story collections.
* "The Girl On The Fridge", Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, ISBN 0-374-53105-6 (paperback).::Includes "Crazy Glue" and other short stories from Keret's first collections. [http://us.macmillan.com/thegirlonthefridge]

Comics

* "Jetlag", Tel Aviv, Actus Tragicus, 1998; Top Shelf Productions, 1999, ISBN 965-90221-0-7.
* "Pizzeria Kamikaze", illustrated by Asaf Hanuka, Alternative Comics, 2005, ISBN 1-891867-90-3.

Children's books

* "Dad Runs Away With The Circus", Cambridge, MA, Candlewick Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7636-2247-8.

Collaborations

* "Gaza Blues" with Samir El-Youssef, London, David Paul, 2004, ISBN 0-9540542-4-5.:: 15 short stories by Keret and a novella by El-Youssef.

References

External links

* [http://www.etgarkeret.com/ Etgar Keret's official site]
* [http://www.icexcellence.com/artists/etgar_keret.html Etgar Keret's web page from the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation website]
* [http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0509/article.2005-08-11.8636345587 Profile of Keret in "Tikkun" magazine] (English)
* [http://www.ithl.org.il/authors.html Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature] bio and list of works
* [http://stage.co.il/Authors/EtgarKeret Etgar Keret at Bamah Hadashah] (in Hebrew)
* [http://www.wristcutters.com Wristcutters: A Love Story] official website of the film
* [http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/629/prmID/1120 Etgar Keret's article in the New York Times] discusses Israeli politics, via Pen American Center
* [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1411618,00.html Interview] , The Observer, February 13, 2005
* [http://www.believermag.com/issues/200604/?read=interview_keret interview] The Believer (April 2006) (English)
* [http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/one-hundred-percent/15773/ Short story One Hundred Percent] LA Weekly (March 2007) (English)
* [http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/an-exclusive/17190/ Short story "An Exclusive"] LA Weekly (September 2007) (English)
* [http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-310/_nr-320/i.html Article on Qantara.de by Lewis Gropp about the joint project with Samir El-Youssef] (August 2006) (English)
* Short story: [http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=229 The Nimrod Flip Out]
* [http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/short-story-freeze/17995/ Short story "Freeze"] LA Weekly (January 2008) (English)
* [http://www.laweekly.com/film+tv/film/loquat-a-short-story/18745/ Short story "Loquat"] LA Weekly (April 2008) (English)
* [http://search.everyzing.com/viewMedia.jsp?res=247082387&dedupe=1&index=4&col=en-aud-public-ep&e=19966168&il=en&num=10&mc=en-aud&start=0&q=Student+Loans&expand=true&match=query,channel&y=11&filter=1&x=48 Interview with Etgar Keret] CBC (May 2008) (English)