Etgar Keret, the Rock and the Hard Place

Whether evoking the tragicomic and surreal for which his short stories first gained acclaim, or awakening the keen love of family in 2015’s The Seven Good Years, Etgar Keret mines the human experience for all of its farce and dignity. The Israeli author recently came by the Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building to speak with Paul Holdengräber, the director of LIVE from the NYPL. The conversation began on Keret’s lost luggage and the two unexpected donations, of a coat and boxer shorts, that followed. From there it turned one strange corner after the next, from Kafka to drug dealers, technophobia, bedtime stories with drunks and prostitutes, and Keret’s anxieties about the ethics of writing fiction.