Summary: Etgar Keret writes deadpan, tragicomic stories about ordinary people who experience extraordinary things: they periodically become possessed by the psychotic spirit of a dead friend; their parents shrink to pocket-size; their sweet girlfriends become hairy, drunken sports fan at night. Already popular in his native Israel, Keret is now gaining a following in the United States. His work has appeared in The New York Times, in a regular column on Nextbook, and now with a new collection of short stories, The Nimrod Flipout, published by FSG. He recently visited New York as part of the PEN World Voices festival. This story includes a reading of Keret’s “Dirt,” by Chanan Tigay.
