Malfunction at the Edge of the Galaxy

Etgar Keret is a master of sad, funny, and very short stories. He has a unique gift for transforming absurd everyday life into penetrating, poignant prose. For the writer, the line between sad and funny isn’t a line at all—it’s a connecting thread, even a border zone where one doesn’t exist without the other. His collection “Breakdown at the Edge of the Galaxy” touches on many themes: friendship, luck, virtual reality, inner and outer metamorphoses, children’s attainable and unattainable desires, shooting from a circus cannon, cloning… But above all, it’s a book about loneliness and the many forms it takes.

Keret’s heroes are ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. Someone cleans cages in a circus and in a minute becomes a “core man.” Someone agrees to play an outraged relative of strangers in a court process. And someone desperately tries to save a stranger by talking him out of jumping from a roof. Keret doesn’t avoid the dark, bitter, and tragic side of life—on the contrary, he builds from it, because it’s precisely the contrast they create that makes moments of happiness clearer and brighter. You can’t predict how the stories will end, but one thing is certain: it will be funny, scary, sad, and surprisingly so.

In 2019, the writer became a laureate of Israel’s prestigious Sapir Prize for “Breakdown at the Edge of the Galaxy.”

These stories were narrated by Grigory Perel, Anastasia Shumilkinа, and Leon Avtaev.

“If Kafka were an Israeli and wrote about talking fish,” — The New York Times

“Keret manages to bring humor into the darkest corners of our world, and his stories turn funny right before the throat tightens with sadness,” — Washington Post

“In Keret’s world, wit often hides shocking wisdom, and suffering regularly blends into fun. If Kafka had turned into a Tel Aviv humorist, his signature would probably be just like this,” — The Guardian