Watch Now: 2024 Dubin Family Lecture

Etgar Keret’s Israel: A Journey through Short Stories

This lecture is presented by the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, the College of Arts and Humanities, and Arts for All at the University of Maryland.  

About the Speaker

Internationally acclaimed Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret is the distinguished speaker for this year’s Dubin Family Lecture. Keret will share his unique perspective on Israel’s current political and social challenges through a writer’s lens. Known for his short stories that rarely extend past four pages, Keret fuses the bizarre with the banal and offers a window into a surreal world that is both dark and comical. In addition to being bestsellers in his home country, Keret's books appear worldwide in over 45 languages. His books include “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God,” “Missing Kissinger,” “The Nimrod Flipout,” “The Girl on the Fridge,” “Suddenly a Knock on the Door” and “Fly Already,” which won the prestigious Sapir Prize for Literature. Keret is also the author of a memoir, “The Seven Good Years,” in which he contemplates moments of his life against a backdrop of constant conflict, casting an absurd light on both the monumental and mundane. Keret’s stories inspired Polish architect Jakub Szczesny to build the narrowest house in the world in Warsaw. Keret's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and The Paris Review, among many other publications. More than 60 short films have been based on his stories. As a filmmaker, Keret’s screenplays include “Skin Deep,” “Wrist Cutters” and “Jellyfish.”

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