First Israeli short story collection released in Vietnam

A famous writer of the Israeli young generations, Etgar Keret, held an exchange with Vietnamese readers in Hanoi on May 7 to introduce his latest best-selling short story collection entitled ‘Suddenly, a knock on the door’ translated into Vietnamese.

Israeli writer Etgar Keret exchanges with Vietnamese readers at the launching of his sixth short story collection, entitled ‘Suddenly, a knock on the door’, in Hanoi on May 7. (Image credit: Nghiem Trung/NDO)

The launch is part of the 2015 European Literature Days which opened in the Goethe Institute in Hanoi on the same day, aiming to bring Vietnamese readers closer to European culture.

Keret's collection is the first literary work of an Israeli writer to be translated into Vietnamese. The collection gives Vietnamese readers a doorway into Israel’s contemporary literature beside its historical, economic and academic books that have been familiar with Vietnamese audiences such as ‘Biography of David Ben Gurion – History of the State of Israel’ and ‘Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle’.

Giving comments on Keret's collection at the launch, Vietnamese writer Le Anh Hoai said that his approach to issues in the short stories is very special, eccentric and somewhat silly.

The collection is a combination of unexpected circumstances all of which are profound, funny and somewhat familiar. Even though the stories’ circumstances are often extremely weird and monstrous, his characters always bear human personality, which are very familiar and intense.

Such as a man that broke into the home of a writer, pointed a gun at the writer’s head and requested him to tell a story, however the narration always requires the writer to escape from reality. Or a lying man who has discovered that all the lies he told had become true. Or a woman who found a zipper in the mouth of her boyfriend, and each time she zips, her boyfriend expresses a completely different person.

It seems that his stories are made up of unreasonable and unimaginable things but when putting the unreasonable things together, reasonable things appeared, said the translator for the collection Le Dinh Chi. He went on to say that Keret’s stories were about some experiences in your own life that each of us may experience at least once in a lifetime.

Sharing creative concepts and ideas for the circumstances in the collection, Keret said that the belief in humanity is the root of his stories. He has a strong confidence that every person has their own good side. Once literature provides love and compassion to the people, the stories written down not only exist on paper but also in the mind of readers.

Keret’s sixth short story collection has helped him to be named among the greatest writers in the world by The New York Times.

The 300-page collection is published in Vietnam by Alpha Books Company and is priced at VND79,000.

The 1967 born writer has received many notable awards for his work in literature, such as the book Publishers Association's Platinum Prize, the UK 2008 Wingate Literary Prize, the St Petersburg Public Library`s Foreign Favourite Award (2010), and the Newman Prize (2012).

His writing has been published in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Paris Review and Zoetrope. Over 60 short films have been made based on his stories, while his books have been published in 36 languages in 39 countries across the world. In 2007, Keret and Shira Geffen won the Cannes Film Festival's ‘Camera d'Or’ Award for their movie Jellyfish.

Within the framework of the European Literature Days 2015, Keret will join British writer Jasper Fforde and Vietnamese writer Di Li in a discussion from 3pm-5pm Friday at Goethe Institute, No. 56-58 Nguyen Thai Hoc street, Hanoi.

(Source: nhandan.org.vn)