Etgar Keret is the world’s most famous liv­ing Israeli writer, known for writ­ing short sto­ries that are lean and acces­si­ble in style, and whim­si­cal, sur­re­al­ist, and dark­ly fun­ny in sub­ject. His work explores life’s small­est, most unre­mark­able inter­ac­tions in ways that are pro­found and unusu­al. The char­ac­ters pop­u­lat­ing his fic­tion have relat­able work and rela­tion­ship prob­lems. They live in a world of ever-advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy, but it is always degrad­ed by the base­ness of human pas­sions and bru­tal­i­ty: a character’s part­ner is a real­i­ty show con­tes­tant from a par­al­lel dimen­sion; anoth­er finds the aster­oid they paid to have named after their wife is sched­uled to col­lide with earth; and an elder­ly wid­ow con­vinces a pop­u­lar AI pro­gram to com­mit sui­cide.

These sto­ries speak to our cur­rent moment in time: the uncer­tain­ty and fragili­ty — full of mis­un­der­stand­ings and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions — while look­ing for rea­sons and the strength to find hope. His sto­ries reveal the fault lines and uncom­fort­able truths in our soci­ety in a style that is mem­o­rably his own.