Kneller's Happy Campers

Master short-story writer Etgar Keret turns his hand to a longer tale - 'The darkest fun I've had in ages' (Matt Haig).

Etgar Keret's writing hits like a bullet. Kneller's Happy Campers is fast and bizarre and full of a fearless street-punk surrealism, as though Charles Bukowski is channelling the imagination of Lewis Carroll. The darkest fun I've read in ages

Keret mixes the laconic style of Raymond Carver and the insane wit of Quentin Tarantino into his own particular, melancholy combination of themes... It's not just a story about people who have taken their lives, but rather a metaphor on how the post-ideological generation is trying to live and survive in this world

There is a subtle mix of innocence and awareness, of caustic irony and tender humour that emerges from this text, as well as from its brilliant author

I think he is a brilliant writer, entirely different from any other I know. He is the voice of the next generation

Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Etgar Keret is one of the leading voices in Israeli literature and cinema. He is the author of five bestselling collections, which have been translated into twenty-nine languages. His writing has been published in the New York Times, le Monde, the Guardian, the Paris Review and Zoetrope. He has also written a number of award-winning screenplays, and Jellyfish, the first film that he directed -along with his wife Shira Geffen - won the Camera d'Or prize for best first feature at Cannes in 2007. In 2010 he was awarded the Chevalier medallion of France's Order of Arts and Letters.

Kneller's Happy Campers is a strange, dark but funny tale set in a world very much like our own but it's an afterlife populated by people who have killed themselves - many of them are young, and most of them bear the marks of their death... bullet wounds, broken necks...(those who have over-dosed are known as 'Juliets'). 
 
When Mordy, our hero, discovers that his girlfriend from his life before has also 'offed' herself, he sets out to find her, and so follows a strange adventure... 
 
Full of the weird and wonderful characters, and the slightly surreal twist of events that we've come to expect from Etgar Keret, this novella is full of humour and comic flashes, but it is also wistful, longing for a better world and perfect love.

Missing Kissinger

Missing Kissinger is a powerful new collection of stories from Israel's bestselling Etgar Keret - most of which are being published in English for the first time

This collection of short stories is easily one of the most memorable, moving and laugh-aloud-funny books you'll read in a long time

Many of the very short stories in this collection are more thought-provoking than the average novel

A collection of short, surreal fragments that place the reader in peculiar and often moving worlds

A beguiling, savagely funny collection of stories...he'll leave you with more questions than answers but you'll feel all the better for it

These are 46 horror stories from Israel, though they acrobatically shape-shift from the political to the fabulous, and are outwardly comic... I enjoyed these wild, blackly inventive pieces very much at times

Etgar Keret is a writer to be taken seriously

Keret's surreal conceits are couched in a wry, downbeat language...The effect is something like a sorrowful hybrid of Kafka and Donald Barthelme: deadpan on the surface, with a bassnote of discomfort and emotional alienation that makes even the briefest tales snag in the mind...Each piece is at once universal and particular...world-class gems.  The translation is brilliant, too

One of the greatest short story writers alive

One of the most important writers alive... enchantingly witty

Etgar Keret's extraordinary imagination sets the reader free from slogans and headlines

Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Etgar Keret is one of the leading voices in Israeli literature and cinema. He is the author of five bestselling collections, which have been translated into twenty-nine languages. His writing has been published in the New York Times, le Monde, the Guardian, the Paris Review and Zoetrope. He has also written a number of award-winning screenplays, and Jellyfish, his first film as a director along with his wife Shira Geffen, won the Camera d'Or prize for best first feature at Cannes in 2007. In 2010 he was awarded the Chevalier medallion of France's Order of Arts and Letters.

'Etgar Keret's short stories are fierce, funny, full of energy and insight, and at the same time they are often deep, tragic and very moving' - Amos Oz 
 
At a children's tea party, a magician tries to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but takes out only its head; a young man has a mother and girlfriend who each demand that he gives them the other one's heart; while a Nobel Laureate asks an orphan to perform a very strange task. 
 
In Etgar Keret's blackly comic stories the unexpected can, and usually does, happen. They are clever, quick, sometimes violent and often intensely poignant. They are, in short, brilliant.

The Nimrod Flip-Out

Warped and wonderful short stories from Israel's hippest young writer.

As Keret is Israeli, it's easy to read his fiction as political allegory... But it's equally easy not to, and simply to delight in a collection of funny, sad, spirited and entertaining stories. 5 stars

Etgar Keret's short stories are fierce, funny, full of energy and insight, and at the same time they are often deep, tragic and very moving

Don't ask questions: just enjoy...Exhilarating

A wildly, wonderfully optimistic collection

Perfectly captures the craziness of life in Israel today

One of the most important writers alive...Enchantingly witty

A blinding display of mischievous wit and excruciating humour

In this collection of brilliant, bite-sized satiric tales, Israel's bestselling Etgar Keret chronicles the strange ironies that suffuse his characters' lives. Daring, illuminating, intense and poignant, these stories are as painfully funny as they are brief and cover a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain, confirming Keret's status as Israel's national conscience.

Etgar Keret

Sondra Silverston

Miriam Shlesinger

Nathan Englander

Etgar Keret has written several great books, but this is his greatest.  These stories are the most funny, dark and poignant I've read in a long time.  It's tempting to say they are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact they are his most Keretesque

Distinctive, understated and very funny... If you read only one book of short stories this year, it should be this one

Etgar Keret is a great short story writer whose work is all the greater because it’s funny...The stories are all thought-experiments. What if, they ask. Why not? And, what the heck? Like all art, they are highly patterned, highly charged, refracted reflections on the chaos and randomness of everyday existence

A maddening, abruptly moving and effortlessly funny collection ... Clever, relevant and oddly resonant, Suddenly a Knock on the Door is Keret’s best, most mature work and the perfect introduction to his sad, strange and moving fiction

At once sophisticated and anti-literary, extremely funny and slyly serious. While invariably set in contemporary Israel, and full of sex and violence, they also hark back to older storytelling traditions such as the parable, the folk tale and the absurdist fiction of Gogol and Kafka

Extremely funny... Keret’s stories understand the plasticity of narrative and the importance of imaginative acts

The ingenious and original master of the short story overflows with absurdity, humour, longing and compassion... Keret's most mature and most playful work yet, and establises him as one of the great international writers of our time

Etgar Keret is an ingenious and original master of the short story. Radical, witty and always unusual, declared a 'genius' by the New York Times, Keret brings all of his prodigious talent to bear in this bestselling collection. 
 
A man barges into a writer's house and, holding a gun to his head, demands that he tell him a story, something to take him away from the real world. A pathological liar discovers one day that all the lies he tells come true. A young woman finds a zip in her boyfriend's mouth, and when she opens it he unfolds to reveal a completely different man inside. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is at once Keret's most mature and most playful work yet, and establishes him as one of the great international writers of our time.

Etgar Keret

Praise for Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

Etgar Keret has written several great books, but this is his greatest. These stories are the most funny, dark and poignant I've read in a long time. It's tempting to say they are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact t ...

Distinctive, understated and very funny... If you read only one book of short stories this year, it should be this one

Etgar Keret is a great short story writer whose work is all the greater because it’s funny...The stories are all thought-experiments. What if, they ask. Why not? And, what the heck? Like all art, they are highly pat ...

Etgar Keret has written several great books, but this is his greatest. These stories are the most funny, dark and poignant I've read in a long time. It's tempting to say they are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact t ...

Distinctive, understated and very funny... If you read only one book of short stories this year, it should be this one

Etgar Keret is a great short story writer whose work is all the greater because it’s funny...The stories are all thought-experiments. What if, they ask. Why not? And, what the heck? Like all art, they are highly pat ...

Etgar Keret has written several great books, but this is his greatest. These stories are the most funny, dark and poignant I've read in a long time. It's tempting to say they are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact t ...

Distinctive, understated and very funny... If you read only one book of short stories this year, it should be this one

Etgar Keret is a great short story writer whose work is all the greater because it’s funny...The stories are all thought-experiments. What if, they ask. Why not? And, what the heck? Like all art, they are highly pat ...

Books by Etgar Keret

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