Keret tries to come up with the stories that capture his late mother, Orna Keret—but it’s hard, he says, because she’s like Maria in West Side Story and she’s also like Thanos from the Avengers. He ends up with a series of very short stories — most just a few paragraphs long — that give glimpses of different sides of her. These written stories are interspersed with off-the-cuff stories he tells This American Life host Ira Glass.

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He looks at me with his enormous eyes—the eyes of a cow the second before it’s slaughtered. To me, in my state, it looks like he’s about to cry. “Let’s do it,” I say to Yogev. “Let’s pray, no big deal. Come on, it’s going to be a blast.”

Read, or listen to Keret read "Mitzva".

I remember the day they came to tell my mom that Dad was dead. I was 7. Someone who was in Dad’s unit came alone, wearing dirty fatigues with bulging pockets. I was sure he was hiding lots of presents in them.

“I’ve never been shot out of a cannon,” I said and took another drag of my cigarette. “Sure you have,” Roman said. “When your ex left you, when your son told you he hates you, when your fat cat ran away. Listen, to be a human cannonball, you don’t need to be flexible or fast or strong, just lonely and miserable as hell.”

"Shane: human cannonball" by jasoneppink is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Benjamin Percy reads “The Story, Victorious” [for the first time] at the Distinguished Writers Series, Wellesley College, November 2014

The instructor, who was supposed to be this well-known writer, even though Aviad had never heard of him, told her that there was something soul-piercing about the banality of the ending, or some other piece of crap. Aviad saw how happy that compliment made Maya.

Read [or listen to Keret reading] the title story “Fly Already” at The New Yorker.

Streets of Rage by Robot Genius. Based on a comic book by Keret and Asaf Hanuka.

"We replay a short piece of fiction by our beloved Etgar Keret. And, as a special bonus, we include highlights of a conversation we held with Etgar during lockdown."

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directed by Goran Dukic (who also directed "wristcutters: A love story")