Etgar Keret
Etgar Keret
Etgar Keretis an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth20 August 1967
CountryIsrael
people secret together
When you work on a graphic novel or a film with people you've been together through a lot and you've exposed your secrets and weaker sides to each other.
mean names challenges
Etgar means "challenge." And my family name is Keret, which means "urban." So my name is "urban challenge." My joke is, it's a good description of a birth but a strange name for a human being.
girl kissing want
In my stories I can kiss the girls I want to kiss and punch the girls I want to punch. Nobody pays a price for it.
brother wish happy-family
If we're a family and your brother wishes you death, it's not a very happy family.
mother war challenges
For my mother, having a family was the most important thing in her life. In the Second World War, it was a challenge - surviving physically and mentally and finding somebody who you loved and who was willing to be with you.
people married sometimes
As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.
israel facts generations
What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.
safe-haven ideas brochures
This idea where, in this safe haven for Jews, Jews will threaten to kill other Jews, it wasn't in the brochure.
book character unique
When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.
unique language hebrew
Hebrew is this unique thing that you cannot translate to any other language. It has to do with its history.
needs use language
You don't need to use the language of God to ask where the restrooms are.
country religious writing
People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech. When I started writing, I thought [the language] was telling the story of this country: old people in a young nation, very religious, very conservative, very tight-assed, but also very anarchistic, very open-minded. It's all in the language, and that's one thing that doesn't translate.
unique thinking stories
I think that, in Hebrew, it's like the language creates a more unique and specific universe even before the story.
writing people stories
I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content - kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on.