In Keret's imagination, Mossad agents torture themselves, quanta visit Einstein on Yom Kippur, and children color paint-by-number pictures of “Nazi henchmen find Anne Frank.” Some readers mistake his wit for irreverence and his postmodern sensibility for nihilism. His stories are mostly set in a recognizable, contemporary Israel, but one in which Zionism's DNA has undergone a slight mutation. His fiction does what all art should do: make the familiar strange. Crazy glue affixes people to ceilings, buses self-destruct on city streets, and refrigerators serve as gilded cages of solitude in Keret's world. They warp your perception of everyday things-glue, buses, refrigerators-that never again seem quite the same. Like the sting of flame that singes your skin, his stories sear into your mind. You could read some of Etgar Keret's stories in the time it takes for a match to burn down to your fingers.

We hope you'll join Adam and our other guests in talking about this fantastic book, and also chip in with your favorite short short story from the collection, for a chance to win one of two signed books by Etgar Keret.-Editors Adam will be posting weekly about reading The Girl on the Fridge and we will also be featuring Adam's interview with Etgar Keret, and essays and exchanges from Todd Hasak-Lowy, Hannan Hever, Moshe Ron and our panel participants Miriam Shlesinger, one of the translators of The Girl on the Fridge, and Phillip Lopate. In conjunction with our live Etgar Keret discussion on March 5th at the Idlewild bookstore in New York, Adam Rovner, writer, scholar and translations editor of Zeek, will be moderating an online discussion on Etgar Keret's Girl on the Fridge.

לא באנו להנות by Etgar Keret