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Published Mar 2012
208 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
Bringing up a child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar Keret's new collection, daily life is complicated, dangerous, and full of yearning. In his most playful and most mature work yet, the living and the dead, silent children and talking animals, dreams and waking life coexist in an uneasy world. Overflowing with absurdity, humor, sadness, and compassion, the tales in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door establish Etgar Keret - declared a "genius" by The New York Times - as one of the most original writers of his generation.
Paperback original
"Many of Keret's stories are literary doodles; others seem to be concepts in search of a few good characters. Readers tuned in to the author's narrow-band broadcast will be pleased." - Publishers Weekly
"His pieces elicit comparison to sources as diverse as Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut and Woody Allen... [Keret is] a writer who is often very funny and inventive, and occasionally profound." - Kirkus Reviews
"Strangeness abounds. Keret fits so much psychological and social complexity and metaphysical mystery into these quick, wry, jolting, funny, off-handedly fabulist miniatures, they're like literary magic tricks: no matter how closely you read, you can't figure out how he does it." - Booklist
"Keret's greatest book yet - the most funny, dark, and poignant. It's tempting to say these stories are his most Kafkaesque, but in fact they are his most Keretesque." - Jonathan Safran Foer
"A brilliant writer... completely unlike any writer I know. The voice of the next generation." - Salman Rushdie
This information about Suddenly, a Knock on the Door was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Etgar Keret is the author of six bestselling story collections. His writing has been published in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope. Jellyfish, his first movie 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 named a Chevalier of France's Order of Arts and Letters. Visit him online at www.etgarkeret.com.
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