Published: 30 August 2019
Last updated: 5 March 2024
ETGAR KERET IS ONE of Israel’s leading writers, known best for his short stories, graphic novels and screenplays; in 2016, he also published an acclaimed memoir, The Seven Good Years.
His new collection, Fly Already, features a father who turns into a rabbit and an array of other surreal and apocalyptic scenarios. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and son.
Like your other books, Fly Already is a wild ride. Can you tell me a bit about what you’re trying to do with short fiction?
For the past 33 years, I’ve been writing short stories, I would say, almost constantly. It’s really more like an uncontrollable reflex, you know, than a career decision. It’s my way of coping with reality.
My stories come from a very unconscious place. I don’t premeditate them, I don’t know what’s going to happen in them. Something about this transformation from writing short stories into a collection is almost like a therapy process in which I understand where I am at that time, what is bothering me, what is my experience.
What happened this time?
I think it had to do with an accident I had about three years ago. I was in a car service going from Connecticut to Boston on a reading tour in the US, and the driver hit another car going something like 120km/h. For the first couple of minutes I thought I was dying, and it was as if I was looking at myself from a distance, being very disappointed that my life was not [flashing] in front of my eyes, like they promised in the brochure.
FULL STORY Etgar Keret: ‘For the past year I haven’t read any books’ (Guardian)
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If Kafka was Israeli and wrote about talking goldfish (New York Times)
Etgar Keret, the writer of absurd, sad, funny and very short stories, grows up.
Photo: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
