My father was very charismatic and a very good storyteller but he couldn't invent anything so he would tell me stories about things that had just happened.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Keret is a secular Jew, but has a sister who is Orthodox.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Seven Good Years Author Etgar Keret He also explores religion and the ways in which it divides Israelis. Keret writes about being the son of survivors, and the father of a son in a country that faces an uncertain future. Keret's mother survived the Holocaust, too. His father died of cancer at the age of 84 - a long life, considering that he had survived the Holocaust as a teenager by living in a hole for nearly two years with his parents. Keret has written a new collection of personal essays, The Seven Good Years, about the time between his son's birth and his father's death. assuming the responsibility of being a parent without having that in your face the day that your son is being born.' 'The idea that you bring your son into a world in which he can be hurt and killed by a random and violent act - it's kind of discouraging,' Keret tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. Yanai Yechiel/Courtesy of Riverhead BooksĪs Israeli writer Etgar Keret waited for his son to be born, victims of a terrorist attack were being brought into the same hospital. Etgar Keret's work has been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and he's contributed to This American Life.

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