Etgar Keret

Overview

One of Israel’s most celebrated writers, Etgar Keret, is joining the Wheeler Centre to discuss his new memoir The Seven Good Years and what it’s like to raise a child in Israel today. 

A major voice in Israeli literature, Keret knows how to weave his surreal stories around a reader's mind — and anyone who’s fallen under his spell knows he creates a fine fabric, often laced with playfulness and poignancy. Keret’s past work manages to offer this playfulness to purgatory, where the deceased somehow manage to fall in love on a beach that’s covered in used needles and curds of condoms (Kneller’s Happy Campers for those keen to dive in). It’s this ability to explore sensitive topics with creativity — and just the right touch of black humour — that makes Keret such an insatiable scribe.

During the evening, Keret will discuss his career, covering his short stories, radio journalism, film and TV, graphic novels and children’s books. He'll also talk about his work The Seven Good Years, which charts the time between his son’s birth and his father’s death, with war as a constant backdrop. True to Keret's style, the memoir questions the conflict of war with family and fatherhood in Tel Aviv, while offering enough bizarre bursts to get us through those blinding shards of truth. So we're expecting some similar magic at this talk.