Etgar Keret

Etgar Keret (born 1967, Ramat Gan, Israel) & Assaf Gavron (born 1968, Arad, Israel) [eds], Tel Aviv Noir [hc, Akashic Books, 2014 - most of the stories translated by Yardenne Greenspan] 978-1617753152 [pb, Akashic Books, 2014] 978-1617753152 [Note: 14 stories about what lovely Tel Aviv has to hide. From the introduction by Etgar Keret: “At any club, most of the people dancing around you to the sounds of a deep-house hit dedicated to peace and love have undergone extensive automatic-weapons training and a hand-grenade tutorial. The workers washing the dishes in the fluorescent-lit kitchen of that same club are Eritrean refugees who have crossed the Egyptian border illegally, along with a group of bedouins smuggling some high-quality hash, which the deejay will soon be smoking on his little podium, right by the busy dance floor filled with drunks, coked-up lawyers, and Ukrainian call girls whose pimp keeps their passports in a safe two streets away. Don’t get me wrong—Tel Aviv is a lovely, safe city. Most of the time, for most of its inhabitants. But the stories in this collection describe what happens the rest of the time, to the rest of its inhabitants. From one last cup of coffee at a café targeted by a suicide bomber, through repeat visits from a Yiddish-speaking ghost, to an organized tour of mythological crime scenes that goes terribly wrong, the stories of Tel Aviv Noir reveal the concealed, scarred face of this city that we love so much.”