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| Etgar Keret |
Kneller`s Happy Campers |
| Novella, Stories |
Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv, Keter/Zmora Bitan, 1998
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Etgar Keret is dreaming of a more perfect and beautiful world. This novella can be read as a clever parody, full of humor and comic flashes, yet also wistful, longing for a better world and perfect love. The hero, Hayim, commits suicide and goes to the place where all suicides end up. He soon finds a job in a pizzeria and makes friends. This posthumous world of the suicides is remarkably like ours: there are Jews and Arabs, junk food and Polish food like Mother`s, but it is also possible to perform small miracles there. For example, Hayim is "dying" to make a miracle and meet his girlfriend, Desirée, who committed suicide not long after he did. His search for Desirée takes him on a colorful, picaresque journey, full of gripping encounters. The climax is the longed-for meeting with Desirée and the Messiah, who promises to show his followers the way to a better world. Needless to say, the Messiah goofs and lets them down, and Hayim loses Desirée for the second time. An incurable optimist, he keeps longing and hoping.
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About the Book
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Yediot Aharonot wrote: "…brilliant, engaging collection…full of empathy, sage and humane humor, funny to the point of tears and sad to the point of laughter…. Kneller`s Happy Campers, a novella written with humor for which the definition "black" is only detrimental. This [work] is much more complex. This is truly absurd humor beyond depression….a wonderful example of a humorous story in the real-surreal absurd genre…an authentic author who looks at himself in fine irony and does not sound a false note." Modern Hebrew Literature vol. 23 writes: "Kneller`s Happy Campers…is not only funny, but also good natured….The Tel Aviv ambiance is reflected in the language of Keret`s fiction which is laced with slang and the scoffing repartee appropriate to Israeli cynics who have negated the old ideologies, and affect a posture of worldly indifference….he grapples with issues of meaningfulness and purpose in life in an inventive, contemporary mode. In spite of his grotesque humor, Keret is not nihilistic. He still yearns for love, even when he realizes. how inauthentic and imitative are the ways we express love."
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