An Evening with Etgar Keret

Description

Acclaimed Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret, perhaps the most influential Israeli writer of his generation, reflects on a body of work that touches upon topics not often discussed, via the mundane to the monumental in his life as an Israeli, a parent, an artist, and the son of Holocaust survivors.

This evening will focus on his newest stories, an homage to his mother, Orna – born in Poland in 1934 – which capture her day-to-day family life in Israel and the traumatic wartime experiences she endured and his experiences with her as a child. “For my mom”, says Keret, "the idea of telling us stories from children's books was like ordering a pizza instead of making us dinner. It would mean that she doesn't love us enough.” His mother made it to Israel after World War II when she was 14. The stories were originally written for an exhibition called "Inside Out" at the Jewish Museum in Berlin and have been shared on "This American Life."

Books will be available for purchase on site with book signing to follow.

Etgar Keret is an internationally acclaimed Israeli writer and filmmaker. Known for his short stories, rarely extending beyond three or four pages, Keret fuses the bizarre with the banal, and offers a window on a surreal world that is both dark and comic. Keret's books have been published in over 45 languages and are bestsellers in Israel. His books include The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God, Missing Kissinger, The Nimrod flipout, The Girl on the Fridge, Suddenly a Knock on the Door, and Fly Already, which won the prestigious Sapir Prize. Keret is also the author of a memoir, The Seven Good Years, in which he contemplates moments of his life against a backdrop of constant conflict, casting an absurd light on both the monumental and mundane. More than 60 short movies have been based on his stories.

Keret's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Paris Review, among many other publications. He is a regular contributor to This American Life. In 2016 Keret was awarded The Charles Bronfman Prize, recognizing his work as inspiring Jewish Values and having global impact. Keret has also received the Book Publishers Association`s Platinum Prize several times, the Chevalier medallion of France’s Order of Arts and Letters, and has been awarded the Prime Minister`s Prize and the Ministry of Culture`s Cinema Prize. Keret’s stories have inspired Polish architect Jakub Szczesny to build the narrowest house in the world (38 inches wide) in Warsaw.

As a filmmaker, Keret is the writer of several feature screenplays, including Skin Deep (1996), which won First Prize at several international film festivals and was awarded the Israeli Oscar. Wrist Cutters, featuring Tom Waits, was based on Keret's story Kneller's Happy Campers. Jellyfish, his first movie as a director along with his wife Shira Geffen, won the coveted Camera d’Or prize for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival 2007. The animated feature film $9.99, based on several of Keret’s stories, marries the tradition of Jewish self-flagellating humor with uncanny absurdity. In 2019, together with his wife Shira Geffen, Keret wrote and directed "The Middleman", a mini-series for the French TV starring Mathieu Amalric.