--- product_id: 22775012 title: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories" brand: "etgar keretnathan englandermiriam shlesingersondra silverston" price: "$38.28" currency: USD in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/22775012-suddenly-a-knock-on-the-door-stories store_origin: US region: United States of America --- # Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories **Brand:** etgar keretnathan englandermiriam shlesingersondra silverston **Price:** $38.28 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories by etgar keretnathan englandermiriam shlesingersondra silverston - **How much does it cost?** $38.28 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.us](https://www.desertcart.us/products/22775012-suddenly-a-knock-on-the-door-stories) ## Best For - etgar keretnathan englandermiriam shlesingersondra silverston enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted etgar keretnathan englandermiriam shlesingersondra silverston brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories ## Images ![Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41YL-FwuXQL.jpg) ![Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41CPa6MBdBL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐ 3.0 out of 5 stars Suddenly, get knocked off your feet! *by A***I on Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2014* Courtsey: http://bookreviewsarundati.wordpress.com/I love this short story collection. Each one is just so brilliant and form-defying. These are the kind of stories that plague my dreams and nightmares each day. I wake up seeing these people, awaking to the call of their longings and threats, peeking from the edge of my seat in some miraculously acquired human condition. Etger Keret is Israeli, and he penned these stories in Hebrew originally. These have been translated by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, and Nathan Englander. My personal favourite is the title story.The stories are set in his head, and the author prefers to be identified as Jewish than Israeli. His writing style reminds me very much of Ibn-e-Safi’s own witty parables that are as absurd as they are rational, goofy yet urgent in all their strangeness. Discerning is his ear for detail that clamours above the noise around us; his prose elevates rather than distracts from this noise:“It all started with a dream. A short, fuzzy dream about his dead mother. In this dream the two of them were sitting on a straw mat in the middle of a clear white surface that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Next to them on this infinite white surface was a bubble gum machine with a bubble top, the old-fashioned kind where you put a coin in the slot, turn the handle – and out comes a bubble gum. And in his dream, Robbie’s mother told him that the afterworld was driving her up the wall, because the people were good, but there were no cigarettes. Not just no cigarettes, no coffee. No radio. Nothing.”Lies have character and soul, and are full seeing sentient beings. Time has its nails bitten. Cheesus Christ is a restaurant that serves hamburgers without cheese and is run by a clinically depressed CEO who refuses to answer e-mails. The situation is absurd, but the problem real. Wisdom abounds the nonsense: “When a dedicated employee turns to her employer with a problem, especially one related to the workplace, the least he could do is acknowledge her existence.” There is a loner who breakfasts alone in the cafe but learns to vicariously through others. Needles prick less than a father’s touch in another. Everyone is going through a hundred and one dress rehearsals; each character is constantly improvising. (“The fish’s secretary asked her to wait until he’d finished an international conference call with his partners in Taiwan”). These are coming-alive stories — no flat characters or dull plot points — only honking until “your heart’s content.” Another story’s narrator eulogizes his dog his dear friend his lover who talks to him in his dreams wearing a grey suit advising in human barritone, “everyone knows there’s no real money in developing the human race. Or any other race, for that matter. But since it’s [ecology] a new field that’s wide open taxationally, there’s nothing to stop me from submitting a mountain of receipts.” Then there’s the story about a man with a zipper mouth. Taking advantage of the fact that her lover slept with his mouth open, Ella slips her finger under his tongue to find a zip! But when she pulls at it, her lover Tsiki opens up “like an oyster”, and inside is Jurgen, a far more alive character. “Work is like a moustache,” he says, “it went out of style long ago.” These are just few glimpses into the quirky world of this joyous collection. All these characters are inward looking and draw their hallucinatory powers and worldly knowledge from this skill. If there is a writer whose fiction style I might identify with, it would be Etgar Keret! Ibn-e-Safi and Edwidge Danticat are others. Rushdie started it (for me), although his prose is trenchant with politics and histories and epic (at its peak), way more verbose and magical nihilist in comparison to Keret’s clever yet contained, dense yet ticklish, deliberate yet no less invisible storytelling. Style stems from a writer’s morality and political axis perhaps. How and where he grew up and when. And although I have enjoyed a lot of postmodern fiction in life, those works have often brimmed with salient iron structures and heroes and heroines who eschewed those; I don’t see any of that resistance functioning as a plot device in Keret’s work. His work is almost post-resistance and by that I don’t by any stretch mean lazy. Like a book of intelligent jokes and riddles, it offers momentous wit and humour. One of Keret’s narrators describe this work best as “an amalgam of deep insights and aluminium. It won’t rust, it won’t bust, but it may wander. It’s super contemporary, and timelessly literary.” The true test of his storytelling however may lie in whether he is able to sustain an entire novel on the strings of his absurdo-realism and something I wonder often about, i.e., could Etgar Keret pull off a marathon?Courtsey: http://bookreviewsarundati.wordpress.com/ ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars Overflowing With Invention And Absurdity *by J***N on Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2012* Etgar Keret can do more in three or four pages than many short story writers can in stories that border on novellas. There are nearly three dozen stories that span just 188 pages, yet many are simply brilliant.The eponymous and first story starts with a directive: "Tell me a story." Under gunpoint, the narrator - Etgar - is ordered to make up a story. He is interrupted early on: "That's not a story...That's an eyewitness report. It's exactly what's happening here and now. Exactly what we're trying to run away from. Don't you go and dump reality on us like a garbage truck. Use your imagination, man, create, invent, take it all the way."I quoted that passage at length because it's really the raison d'etre of the collection. Etgar, an Israeli writer, leaves the politics and the moral quandaries to others such as David Grossman, Amos Oz and Nathan Englander. His stories focus on the escape from reality through stories that stretch and define us.Some - as would be the case with any collection - are better than others. I'll call out a few: Lieland, where the subjects of lies become real, is one of my favorites. The protagonist, Robbie, learns that his lies live and thrive in another dimension and he meets his "lies come alive" simply by turning a handle.Teamwork, another fine story, starts like this: "My son wants me to kill her. He's still young and doesn't express this perfectly yet, but I know exactly what he's after." The "her" refers to his maternal grandmother; he is the product of divorce and a brutal plan is soon imagined by his obsequious father. Or take another story: Unzipping; in it, the narrator finds a small zipper under her lover's tongue; when she pulls it, he opens up "like an oyster" with a second man revealed. One more: Mourner's Meal. a very recent widow opens up her failing restaurant the morning after his funeral, and gains connection with a group of strangers.Not all the stories succeed as well; it makes me wish there were a way I could rate this a 4.5. But the ones that DO shine are so luminous that it is hard for me not to rate upward. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars Stories not for the meek *by K***H on Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2013* People who need all the answers served on a platter,- who have no sense for the absurd,- who don't enjoy short stories with open ends,- who do not care to see realistic interpersonal relations even if they don't look pretty,- who have no sense of dark humor,- who are dogmatic and self righteous,will most likely not enjoy this book.I loved it for all the above reasons and more.I loved it because it is weird, sad, cruel, humorous like life, because some stories begin and end abruptly like glimpses into someone elses life through a keyhole.Because it does have a lot to do with our reality in Israel but not just.But most of all because I sense a deep compassion of the author for his fellow beings and the absurd relations and situations they navigate themselves into and how they really don't have much choice.And last but not least, because it is really well translated, as I myself am not able to read the Hebrew original.My first book by Etgar Keret which was given to me by my teenage son who adores Keret and read everything by him.And now I adore Keret too. Having said this not everything my bibliophile kids are excited about resonates with me. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.us/products/22775012-suddenly-a-knock-on-the-door-stories](https://www.desertcart.us/products/22775012-suddenly-a-knock-on-the-door-stories) --- *Product available on Desertcart United States of America* *Store origin: US* *Last updated: 2026-04-23*