The Book of the Day: 'Fly Already' Stories By Etgar Keret

Check Out This Incredible Israeli Fiction Author

An Israeli fiction writer who’s broken through to world fame, his work translated into 46 languages, is Etgar Keret. What makes that accomplishment even more impressive is that Keret doesn’t write novels, but short stories—in an era when publishers are known to flee short-story collections like a malignant virus. But Keret’s stories are punchy, striking, and unique enough that they break through all the barriers.

His most recent collection to be translated into English, Fly Already, is vintage Keret. That means a blend of the wildly funny and the deeply tragic, of gritty realism and bizarre flights of fantasy, that recalls almost no other writer; only Kafka can be seen as a literary second cousin. And it’s all told in a prose so immediate, arresting, and absolutely sure of itself that to read Keret is to feel urgently addressed by a voice like no other you’ve ever heard.