Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

In his new collection of stories, Etgar Keret once again proves his endless ingenuity. In fact, these are some of the finest and most mature he has written. In “Suddenly a Knock on the Door,” a man barges into the writer`s house and demands that he tell him a story, because the real world is exasperating and he needs something different. The familiar humdrum and the exciting “different” reappear in many of the stories: the imagination takes over and an absurd, surreal world is created. Another story is about a pathological liar who discovers one day that all his lies are true, and a third tells about a young woman who finds a miniature zipper in her partner`s mouth. When she unzips it, her partner opens up-literally-and inside she discovers Jurgen who, if we can believe his penis, is not even Jewish. The stories are funny but also dark and menacing. The boy from Keret`s earlier stories has grown older and become a naןve, defeatist Woody Allen-like figure who forges an alliance of the weak with his young son. Together, the two become a winning team that battles a violent, evil and depressing world. As always, however, Keret also gives us wonderful moments of grace and strives to reach the human spark in a dark world.