The Seven Good Years - Tapa dura

'Comic, surreal and disorientating... Close in spirit to Woody Allen, these 36 pin-sharp snapshots of life on the permanent knife-edge of what Israelis call hamatzav - 'the situation' - temper nervous comedy with aching tenderness.' -- Boyd Tonkin, Independent

'Keret is a master: bracing, compassionate, so absolutely himself' -- Observer

'Hilarious, hopeful, rueful, and wise, the essays together forms a moving exploration of identity: what it means to be a father, a son, a brother, a husband, a writer, a Jew, an Israeli. A warm-hearted delight in life's absurdities threaded through with acute sensitivity to its sorrows' -- Financial Times

'Keret is one of the outstanding writers of his generation...These short pieces about Keret's daily life in Tel Aviv capture the strangeness of living in a country constantly threatened by violence but they also allow the normality of ordinary life to shine through' --Jewish Chronicle

'The Seven Good Years feels very much like the work of a writer coming to maturity... Keret himself wrote his first short story while serving in the Israeli military, and the comic, self-deprecating style of The Seven Good Years is infused with the melancholy knowledge that conflict is likely to be a constant for Lev [his son], too. War in these essays isn't dramatic or heroic, but something akin to rain in the British summertime, just a miserable backdrop against which the rest of life is played out. The Seven Good Years brings the central conflict of our times - which can seem comfortingly remote - right into the living room. This is a vision of life everyone can relate to' --Guardian

'Contemplating his life against a backdrop of constant conflict, The Seven Good Years is quite simply a wonderful and beautifully-written observation of the monumental and the mundane...The Seven Good Years is so much more than an exposure of Israel's underbelly; both heartwarming and chilling, Keret's stories have an empathic curiosity and affection for other human beings which truly sets him apart...There really is a deep sense of warmth running through almost every page of The Seven Good Years. There is a universal sense of humour and poignant wisdom.'

'The book [in which she is quoted] is a delight, but a melancholy one; for the approaching bad years - which appear inevitable - are man-made, and therefore redeemable.' - Clive Sinclair, TLS

'A pleasure to read' -- Bookseller --ABC Brisbane

Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitic remarks both real and imagined, and, perhaps most worrisome of all, a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to chase him to the grave. Emerging from these darkly absurd circumstances is a series of funny, tender ruminations on everything from his three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind Angry Birds. Moving deftly between the personal and the political, the playful and the profound, The Seven Good Years takes a life-affirming look at the human need to find good in the least likely places, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our capricious world.