The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories

The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories
by Etgar Keret

The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories
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Book Summary Information

Author: Etgar Keret
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-01
ISBN: 1592641059
Number of pages: 200
Publisher: Toby Press
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9781592641055
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Book Reviews of The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories

Book Review: Fresh, forceful, genius
Summary: 5 Stars

There is no way to know whether you will like this book or not, because it's totally fresh and different from any other writer out there (to my knowledge; if I'm missing something please do let me know). This is a voice like nothing I've ever read, with incredible imagination and depth. A window into modern Israeli culture as well as some of the deepest and most raw human emotions, the kind you don't access in the course of normal life. And it was liberating - finally, a vision of the place our present lives occupy in the great big eternity or whatever this thing might be that's tangible and all the more meaningful for not being swept aside for a set of answers. Keret's is an anchorless irreverance; instead of bashing its head against some existing philosophy, it just lets itself unfold. Reading him was a completely new and revelationary experience for me and I would recommend him to anyone who can sweep aside everything they might have heard or read - including this review - and just read him with wide open eyes.

Summary of The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories

Israel's hippest bestselling young writer today, Etgar Keret is part court jester, part literary crown prince, part national conscience. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God gathers his daring and provocative short stories for the first time in English.Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Keret's stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. As with the best comic authors, hilarity and anguish are the twin pillars of his work. Keret covers a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain-from a father's first lesson to his by to a standoff between soldiers caught in the Middle East conflict to a slice of life where nothing much happens. Bus Driver includes stories from Keret's bestselling collections in Israel, Pipelines and Missing Kissinger, as well as Keret's major new novella, "Kneller's Happy Campers," a bitingly satirical yet wistful road trip set in the afterlife for suicides.
Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories stings and thrills with fierce fables of modern life. Set in landscapes ranging from "this armpit town outside Austin, Texas" to "this village in Uzbekistan that was built right smack at the mouth of Hell," these stories lay their plots' central tensions out plainly: "Dad wouldn't buy me a Bart Simpson doll," one begins. Then they take off like little roller coasters, careening through the pathos of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, the clowning of David Sedaris's Barrel Fever, the in-your-face violence of Quentin Tarantino, and the bewildered alienation of Franz Kafka. But readers need not know any of Keret's sources to enjoy his stories fully. The Israeli writer's aphorisms leap off the page and lodge themselves in the mind: "There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed." Keret's vernacular prose is fun to read, and his vision of the world is weirdly comforting. Happiness never really flourishes, but small hopes and graces abound. --Michael Joseph Gross

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