Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories
    Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories
    Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories
    Audiobook5 hours

    Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories

    Written by Etgar Keret

    Narrated by Ira Glass and Willem Dafoe

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Bringing up a child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar Keret's new collection, daily life is complicated, dangerous, and full of yearning. In his most playful and most mature work yet, the living and the dead, silent children and talking animals, dreams and waking life coexist in an uneasy world. Overflowing with absurdity, humor, sadness, and compassion, the tales in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door establish Etgar Keret—declared a "genius" by The New York Times—as one of the most original writers of his generation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    TranslatorNathan Englander and Miriam Shlesinger
    Release dateApr 24, 2012
    ISBN9781427222527
    Author

    Etgar Keret

    Etgar Keret (Tel Aviv, 1967) ha publicado libros de relatos, una novela y cómics, todos ellos best-sellers en Israel. Su obra ha sido traducida a treinta idiomas y ha merecido diversos premios literarios. Numerosos cortometrajes se han basado en sus relatos, e incluso uno de ellos ganó el American MTV Prize en 1998. Actualmente es profesor adjunto en el departamento de Cine y Televisión de la Universidad de Tel Aviv. Su película Jellyfish, realizada en colaboración con Shira Geffen, mereció los premios Cámara de oro, Mejor Película y Mejor Guión en la Semana de la Crítica, en el festival de Cannes de 2007. Ha sido condecorado Caballero de la Orden de las Artes y las Letras 2010 por el Ministerio de Cultura de Francia.

    Related to Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

    Related audiobooks

    Short Stories For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      American Myth: The Short, Beautiful Life of Breece D’J Pancake

      Jun 26, 2017

      The best American writer of his generation would have been sixty-five this week. The post American Myth: The Short, Beautiful Life of Breece D’J Pancake appeared first on The Millions.

      14 min read

    • Article

      Kim Stanley Robinson Holds Out Hope

      Oct 7, 2020

      There’s something about stories. We cherish them. Teach them. Pass them down to the next generation. Stories create a sacred space that humans have always respected. And science fiction takes us one step further. It gives us the space to imagine what

      8 min read

    • Article

      'Wellness' Is A Perfect Novel For Our Age, Its Profound Sadness Tempered With Humor

      Sep 20, 2023

      Nathan Hill's stunning new novel about the stories we tell about our lives and our loves, and how we sustain relationships throughout time, is both funny and heartbreaking, sometimes on the same page.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Humanity of Being Freakish: The Millions Interviews Kevin Wilson

      Nov 15, 2019

      The goal is that my sons, Griff and Patch, eventually don’t need me anymore. But I can’t reconcile that yet. So, again, I write about that anxiety. The post The Humanity of Being Freakish: The Millions Interviews Kevin Wilson appeared first on The Mi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Monster

      Dec 1, 2022

      Monster
      7 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      Begin Again

      Jun 14, 2022

      My grandfather came to live with me. There was nowhere else for him to go. What had happened to all his children? Death, decay, exile—I hardly know. My own parents died of pain. But I must not be too gloomy, at the beginning, or you will leave me, an

      6 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      What is the uncanny valley? asks the student and I draw the graph on the board, and point to the lowest point, and then move up the slope; This is like a scarecrow, it’s kinda shaped like a human but you’re not sure; This is where you’d put a mannequ

      6 min read

    • Article

      The July War

      Sep 8, 2020

      In summer, our neighborhood quiets in phases. The quieting begins in May. Schools give their older kids, the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, a month off to prepare for the baccalaureate exams. Following a ritual as old as our parents, the students

      21 min read

    • Article

      Nugrybauti

      Apr 24, 2019

      Nugrybauti
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Silhouette Artist

      Jul 25, 2019

      The Silhouette Artist
      6 min read

    • Article

      Life After Death

      May 27, 2022

      Life After Death
      14 min read

    • Article

      Six Stories

      Sep 8, 2020

      I’m on the train, traveling alone, with two seats to myself. I have to use the restroom. Without thinking about it carefully, I ask a couple across the aisle if they would please watch my things for me for a moment. Then I take a closer look at them

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Show Boy

      Oct 9, 2019

      The Show Boy
      9 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • Article

      A Little About Why

      Jun 1, 2023

      A Little About Why
      15 min read

    • Article

      A rapist was HIDING IN THE WALLS

      Sep 3, 2020

      Paul Verhoeven, 37, Melbourne, Vic Wandering around my parents’ walk-in-wardrobe, I noticed the pile of cardboard boxes stacked in the corner. I was only seven, but knowing they contained items relating to my dad John’s work as a police officer, I

      3 min read

    • Article

      Come with Me

      Dec 1, 2022

      Come with Me
      12 min read

    • Article

      Pleasure Palace

      Sep 1, 2022

      Pleasure Palace
      15 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

    4/5

    150 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This guy has great ideas. One of his stories became the movie Wristcutters. His writing is very simple and some of his stories are really just story fragments.
    • 3/5
      Once again, I struggle with how to review a short story collection. Favorites:"Suddenly, a Knock on the Door" "Unzipping""Pick a Color""Bitch""Bad Karma""What, of this Goldfish, Would You Wish?"-- My favorite, about a magical wish-granting goldfish."One Step Beyond" These stories are ultra-short, and often surreal. Overall, I feel this is an uneven short story collection: some stories are very good, however, a lot are only so-so.
    • 5/5
      Especially fantastic collection as an audiobook. I have no idea how Keret assembled such an all star cast. Every story has a twist and all of them seem to work.
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite short story collection of all time. Most stories are only three or so pages, and, combined, they had me crying at times and laughing out loud at other times. What spectacular wit, range, power, and imagination.
    • 4/5
      I listened to the audio version of this book of short stories and loved that they were read by many authors and actors. Some stories were truly phenomenal while others were just okay.
    • 3/5
      This collection of quirky short stories deals with a lot of relatable aspects of modern day life and romance.  Some of the stories are moderately entertaining, others are excessively prurient, and most are good but not great.  With Ira Glass narrating a couple of stories this sounds like a middling episode of This American Life (This Israeli Life?).  The magical realism aspects are fun but mostly I was slightly charmed rather than overwon by these stories. 
    • 3/5
      The book is not good. The book is not bad. The book is not my taste.

      If you read a book like you're going to a museum to see paintings framed on the wall, but when you get to the exhibition it's just pencil sketches on napkins or Steno pads, that's what these stories are like.

      Seems like he's jotting down ideas but doesn't really put the work in to bother with the filling in and filling out of the pictures.

      I'm really not at all sure why this work is so highly rated.
    • 5/5
      Wow, what a ride! Loved it.
      Wildly inventive. It's like literary Silly Putty that's been smushed up against color comics, peeled off and then stretched and pulled. It kind of looks the same as the real thing but is weirdly distorted. In a way that is more interesting and alive than the original.
      And then it makes you smile.
    • 4/5
      Etgar Keret’s short stories are very short – the longest ones are around ~10 pages. They usually have some bizarre, metafictional or fantastical elements and are a quick read. I’d previously read another collection, The Nimrod Flipout, and enjoyed that one although I don’t think any of the individual stories stuck with me. This collection was similarly fun and the stories flew by, although there were some that seemed pointless and others relied on random twists at the end.I liked the more metafictional stories about writers – the first one “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door”, where the author-narrator is forced to come up with stories; “The Story, Victorious” – a bit Calvino-esque; “Creative Writing”, where stories from a writing workshop reflect a troubled relationship; and “What Animal Are You” which shows a writer pretending to write for a picture. A number of stories find various sad loners, widows and widowers or single fathers in absurd or unreal situations. “Cheesus Christ” moves through a series of people with fleeting connections, showing their sad lives and problems. Two soldiers come to inform a woman that her husband “Simyon” is dead, but there’s a problem: she’s not married. This one had a nice twist – good for such a short story. In “Healthy Start” a lonely man pretends to be whoever it is that random people at a diner are looking for. A hopelessly in love man imagines parallel worlds where he is happy in “Parallel Universes.” There are many very short stories in this collection and of course not all of them work. “Pick a Color” about people of differing colors interacting, is rather simplistic; “Grab the Cuckoo by the Tail”, about a recently dumped man and his annoying friend doesn’t quite hit the mark. Despite the fantastic nature of some of the stories, they are firmly grounded in the everyday and illuminate the ironies, absurdities, and sadness of ordinary life.I don’t know that any of these stories are going to stick with me, but it was a good read and I kept wanting more.
    • 3/5
      A collection of short stories, with usual the Etgar Keret themes: the surrealism of living in Israel, suicide, alternative personal histories and women who disappear out of your life. Not as good as (or maybe less of a surprise than) the first book of his that I read (Happy Campers), but still a very enjoyable and wistful read.
    • 5/5
      As someone who writes for a living, Keret’s way to dish out ideas by the dozen is borderline annoying: “Here’s a great concept which gets three pages, here’s a clever idea which gets, um, four and a half”. He uses exactly as much text as he needs to to present each story, and not a line more: an angel is faced with someone who actually wishes for world peace with his dying breath. A man wakes up from a coma, and can’t find a way to explain to his wife how much more wonderful it was than being awake. And three distant business acquaintances find themselves the only guests at a birthday party – and the birthday boy seems to have gone missing. A contract killer finds Hell is very different than he thought.Some stories here are more everyday, borderline realistic, than I’ve read from Keret before. The blend in this book seems eclectic and all over the place, but somehow also works fantastically as a whole. Most impressive of all is that Keret isn’t just about the clever idea and the cool twist. He also manages to conjure interesting, relatable characters and say something about life in contemporary Israel. This is truly a big bag of delicious nibbles. Great, great, great stuff.
    • 5/5
      I was surprised on how quickly Suddenly, a Knock on the Door pulled me in. I only said that I would only read the first story which shares its name with the title and I wound up read the first 80 pages. Keret's short stories are so captivating, quirky, weird, hilarious, and compelling that it is extremely hard to to stop reading.

      Since Keret, I am assuming, is an Israeli author, his stories were translated by three different people. My favorites were "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door,""Lieland,""Cheesus Christ,""The Polite Little Boy,""One Step Beyond," and "Parallel Universes."

      I definitely want to read more from this author.
    • 2/5
      it takes a moment to get used to this kind of humor, but once yiu are in the mood for it, it is pretty funny or weird or corky. but then again half way through it turned too corky for me and i lost interest.
    • 5/5
      As usual (this is Keret after all), here is a collection of stories of the sometimes surreal, the sometimes bizarre, the sometimes humdrum, all with an insight into something much bigger than expected. Stories like the one about a lonesome Russian with a magic goldfish, a dead wife reincarnated in a French Poodle, and a girl who unzips her boyfriend and finds a completely different man inside are not uncommon to Keret, they are indeed to be expected, but there is always that other side, the human side, to the madness - Keret is an absolute master at seeing the world in a grain of sand and this new collection is only more proof of the same brilliance.