Etgar Keret

Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, in 1967, Etgar Keret is the most popular writer among Israel’s young generation and has also received international acclaim. He has been published in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Paris Review and Zoetrope, among others, and over 40 short movies have been based on his stories, one of which won the American MTV Prize. His feature film Wristcutters (2006) also won several international awards, and $ 9.99, based on a number of his short stories, was released to critical acclaim in 2009. Keret resides in Tel Aviv and lectures at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received the Book Publishers Association’s Platinum Prize several times, the Prime Minister’s Prize (1996), the Ministry of Culture’s Cinema Prize, the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize (UK, 2008) the St Petersburg Public Library’s Foreign Favorite Aothor Award (2010) and the Neuman Prize (2012). In 2007, Keret and Shira Geffen won the Cannes Film Festival’s “Camera d’Or” Award for their movie Jellyfish, and Best Director Award of the French Artists and Writers’ Guild. In 2010, Keret was awarded the prestigious French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres decoration. He has twice been a finalist for the O’Connor Short Story Award. Most recently, he was awarded the Charles Bronfman Prize (USA, 2016) and the ADEI-WIZO Prize for The Seven Good Years (Italy, 2016).

Keret’s books have been published abroad in 42 languages in 45 countries.

Photo by: Yanai Yechiel