Etgar Keret : A Little Strange, Entirely Human

If you’re new to Etgar Keret, Fly Already is the perfect place to begin. Across twenty-two short stories, the acclaimed Israeli writer transforms ordinary moments into surreal, emotionally charged encounters, blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination.

The title story follows a father and son who notice a man standing precariously on a ledge. While the father fears the worst, the young boy imagines the man might simply fly away like Superman. Their contrasting perspectives create a story that is both tense and philosophical. Elsewhere, fathers transform into rabbits, confined spaces distort reality, and artificial intelligence blurs the boundaries between what is human and what is manufactured. Like Keret’s characters, readers are constantly invited to question what is real and what exists only in the imagination of the subjects.

Beneath the absurdity though, lies incisive social commentary. Keret uses humour and fantasy to expose the fragility of the assumptions on which we build our lives. In The Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon, for example, the protagonist’s reckless pursuit of danger is darkly comic, contemplating the risks taken to feel alive.

My second recommendation is Etgar Keret’s latest short story collection, Autocorrect.

The opening story, A World Without Selfie Sticks, immediately establishes the collection’s tone. A man meets a woman who looks exactly like his wife, except she isn’t. She is “Not-Debbie”, a version of his wife from a parallel universe. From there, Keret explores loneliness and our longing for connection, whether with partners, children or even artificial intelligence. One particularly memorable story imagines a scientist who sets out to eliminate loneliness by creating a digital soulmate for every person. But what happens when your robotic companion outlives you?

Autocorrect is a quick read, but has a lingering emotional impact with thoughtful reflections on what it means to truly be present in the lives of others.

One of Israel’s most celebrated contemporary writers, Keret has been publishing short fiction for more than three decades. Fly Already won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction in the United States, while its original Hebrew edition received Israel’s prestigious Sapir Prize for Literature.

Keret has described the self-reflective nature of his writing as “his way of coping with reality”; a fitting description for stories that transform the bizarre into profound insights about what it means to be human.