Week 10

Class Ground Rules

Read all the assignments before class.
Keep yourself on mute unless called on.
Raise your hands electronically.
Focus your comments only on the question at hand rather than straying to other parts of the story.
Refrain from offering a review of the whole story or jumping to the end.
Try to support your comments by referring to details from the text.
Listen to and respond to others with respect.

READ (at least twice): Etgar Keret - Inside Out Stories, (from an exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin, Oct. 21, 2022 - March 19, 2020). PDF posted below.

Nine very short stories portray both day-to-day family life in Israel, where the author lives, and traumatic wartime experiences inspired by the life of the author’s mother, who was born in Poland in 1934.

Think About:

Keret's relationship with his mother.
Keret's mother's relationship with her mother.
Autobiography or fiction?

Purely Optional

Listen to Keret read and discuss his stories with Ira Glass on This American Life

Half-Baked Stories About My Dead Mom - This American LifeWriter Etgar Keret tries to come up with the stories that capture the different sides of his mother.

Click the top right corner below to expand the story.

Click the photo below to visit the exhibition and hear Etgar Keret read the stories.

Etgar Keret - Inside Out Stories.pdf

Inside Out Etgar KeretWith Inside Out, the Jewish Museum Berlin is presenting an exhibition by the Israeli writer Etgar Keret. Taking memories of his mother as his point of departure, Keret has written new short stories specifically for this occasion, and this exhibition is their world premiere. The stories portray both day-to-day family life in Israel, where the author lives, and traumatic wartime experiences inspired by the life of the author’s mother, who was born in Poland in 1934.

Photo by Lielle Sand

Etgar Keret Biography

Etgar Keret was born in 1967 in Ramat Gan, Israel. The author of books, novels and short stories is one of the leading writers of contemporary Israeli literature.

His works have been translated into 49 languages worldwide and have won numerous awards: the Book Publishers Association’s Platinum Prize several times, the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize (UK, 2008), the Charles Bronfman Prize in recognition of his work imparting an inspiring Jewish humanitarian vision (2017) and the Sapir Prize (2018), Israel’s most prestigious literary award, for his latest book Fly Already (original title: תקלה בקצה הגלקסיה), which has also been shortlisted as one of the best books of 2019 by the Financial Times and the New York Public Library. Read more...

Link to Week 10 class recording: https://brandeis.zoom.us/rec/play/wZTb5cWZAQrz_gLn72KWKqsLAPikitx_J-RoxXewU01-Ibkcb0Di8wZHhqKEmsE2v_arWewQEim0lZ3S.lq-kNueys1HX2_4n

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