Often short and frequently surreal, Etgar Keret's stories are poignant reflections upon the oft overlooked struggle that is ordinary life.
The Nimrod Flipout is a collection of 30 such stories from this celebrated Israeli author, each ranging in length from a paragraph to just a few pages (the book itself weighs in at a mere 167 pages). Keret is an artist in seamlessly blending magical realism with the mundane to surprising effect. His characters react nonchalantly to their often surreal circumstances: a girlfriend who at dusk turns into a fat, hairy-backed soccer fiend, a child whose growth mysteriously causes his parents to shrink, a guy who loses a 100 shekel bet in a bar that leaves his friend trapped in a Carlsberg Beer bottle. Keret delivers these surreal elements in a signature deadpan that underscores the fact that they are simultaneously instrumental and incidental in building his motifs.
Some hilarious, some melancholic - each of the pieces in The Nimrod Flipout are like a Zen koan. I walk away with a dashed-off bit of truth taped to my back and Keret, just out of view, laughing.
