The Seven Good Years [Yours, Insincerely]

“I just got here an hour ago, all excited, with my wife about to give birth. And now I`m sitting in the hallway feeling glum. Everyone has gone to treat the people injured in the terrorist attack. My wife`s contractions have slowed down, too. Probably even the baby feels this whole getting-born thing isn’t that urgent anymore.”

For six and a half years Etgar Keret has recorded his personal life, beginning with the birth of his first child and ending with his father’s death. But Keret’s sad-funny pieces tell much more than the story of his family and his career. With an ex-settler, ultra-Orthodox sister who has eleven children and eight grandchildren; a peacenik, marijuana-legalizing brother and Holocaust-survivor parents, his personal story seems to tell the story of an entire society.

After all, when your child is born on the same day as a suicide bombing; when a chat among 3-year-old kids’ parents involves questions like “Will your son join the army when he’s eighteen?” and an old school friend is scared that his model Eifel tower‒made of matchsticks‒will be ruined by Scud missiles, the personal and the national are hard to distinguish, especially in this strange part of the world.