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Overview

Israeli crime fiction that “sets the bar high for subsequent Noir offerings. The genre is hot, Tel Aviv is exotic, and this volume is outstanding” (Library Journal, starred review).

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched with the summer ’04 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. For Tel Aviv Noir, Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron have masterfully assembled some of Israel’s top contemporary writers into a compulsively readable collection.
 
Along with Gon Ben Ari’s story “Clear Recent History”—winner of the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award for Best P.I. Short Story—this anthology includes brand-new stories by: Etgar Keret, Gadi Taub, Lavie Tidhar, Deakla Keydar, Matan Hermoni, Julia Fermentto, Shimon Adaf, Alex Epstein, Antonio Ungar, Gai Ad, Assaf Gavron, Silje Bekeng, and Yoav Katz; translated by Yardenne Greenspan.
 
Jewish Journal’s Noteworthy Books for the New Year
 
“There’s a marvelous underlying tension to [the stories], a paranoid tinge, as if some vast monstrous conspiracy is lurking behind every misdeed and bad stroke of luck.” —San Francisco Book Review

“The collection reflects much of the daily reality of the city, but not the sort one is likely to read in tour guides . . . There’s a complexity and virtuosity to plot and prose that leaves the reader with a sense of satisfaction and appreciation, despite the typically devastating denouement of the tales . . . Superb.” —PopMatters
 
“Consistently strong . . . Definitely one of the highlights in the long-running Akashic series.” —Booklist, starred review

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781617753350
Publisher: Akashic Books
Publication date: 09/15/2014
Series: Akashic Noir Series
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 290
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Etgar Keret was born in Tel Aviv in 1967. He is the author of five collections of short stories, three children's books, and three graphic novels. His writing has been published in the New Yorker, Zoetrope, and the Paris Review. His books have been translated into thirty-four languages and published in over thirty-eight countries. In 2007, Keret and Shira Geffen won the Cannes Film Festival's Caméra d'Or Award for their movie Jellyfish. In 2010, Keret received the Chevalier Medallion of France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He is the coeditor of Tel Aviv Noir.Assaf Gavron is an Israeli writer and translator. He is the author of five novels and a short story collection. His fiction has been translated to many languages and adapted to the stage and cinema. He is the winner of several awards including the Israeli Prime Minister's Creative Award for Authors, Buch für die Stadt in Germany, and Prix Courrier International in France. Gavron is responsible for the highly regarded English-to-Hebrew translations of J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, and Jonathan Safran Foer's novels. He is the coeditor of Tel Aviv Noir.

Read an Excerpt

Tel Aviv Noir


By Etgar Keret, Assaf Gavron, Yardenne Greenspan

Akashic Books

Copyright © 2014 Akashic Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61775-154-7



INTRODUCTION

The Dark Side of the Bubble


When I was a kid we didn't have a car. My dad and I didn't like taking the bus, and preferred to walk. I liked the peace and quiet of walking. Dad liked being able to smoke. Sometimes, when we walked down the neighborhood's main street together, Y's car drove by. Y was one of the most famous criminals in the country in those days. He'd pull up and greet my father. He'd ask how he was and how my mother was and offer us a ride. Usually we said no, but once or twice he gave my dad a ride to a meeting on the other side of town.

One night, when I was already in high school, the evening news reported that Y had been arrested as a murder suspect. Dad, who was watching with me, lit a cigarette and shook his head. "This has to be a mistake," he said. "You know Y. How could they accuse someone so warm and kind of murder?"

Almost thirty years later I found myself sitting with Johnny Temple of Akashic Books at a coffee shop in SoHo. When he asked me to edit the anthology Tel Aviv Noir, I felt a little like my father in front of the television. I wanted to say, "Tel Aviv Noir? This has to be a mistake." Tel Aviv is one of the happiest, friendliest, most liberal cities in the world. What could possibly be dark about our sunny city, a city nicknamed "The Bubble" due to its sense of complete separation from the violent, conflicted country in which it is situated? Compared to Jerusalem—torn apart, exploding with nationalism, xenophobia, and religious zeal—Tel Aviv has always been an island of sanity and serenity. If you don't believe me, you can ask my eight-year-old son, who walks to school by himself every day, fearlessly. Stories of crime and sleaziness taking place in my beloved city sounded about as unbelievable to me as the accusations against Y had sounded to my father.

By the way, Y is no longer with us. A bomb attached to the bottom of his car took care of that. But Tel Aviv is still around, and considering and reconsidering the question, I realize that in spite of its outwardly warm and polite exterior, Tel Aviv has quite a bit to hide. At any club, most of the people dancing around you to the sounds of a deep-house hit dedicated to peace and love have undergone extensive automatic-weapons training and a hand-grenade tutorial. This isn't a conspiracy, my friends, just one of the fringe benefits of a country that institutes mandatory military service.

The workers washing the dishes in the fluorescent-lit kitchen of that same club are Eritrean refugees who have crossed the Egyptian border illegally, along with a group of bedouins smuggling some high-quality hash, which the deejay will soon be smoking on his little podium, right by the busy dance floor filled with drunks, coked-up lawyers, and Ukrainian call girls whose pimp keeps their passports in a safe two streets away.

Don't get me wrong—Tel Aviv is a lovely, safe city. Most of the time, for most of its inhabitants. But the stories in this collection describe what happens the rest of the time, to the rest of its inhabitants. From one last cup of coffee at a café targeted by a suicide bomber, through repeat visits from a Yiddish-speaking ghost, to an organized tour of mythological crime scenes that goes terribly wrong, the stories of Tel Aviv Noir, edited by Assaf Gavron and myself, reveal the concealed, scarred face of this city that we love so much.


Etgar Keret Tel Aviv, Israel July 2014


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Tel Aviv Noir by Etgar Keret, Assaf Gavron, Yardenne Greenspan. Copyright © 2014 Akashic Books. Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Encounters

“Sleeping Mask” by Gadi Taub (Beach Hotels Strip)

“Women” by Matan Hermoni (Basel Street)

“The Time-Slip Detective” by Lavie Tidhar (Rabin Square)

“Slow Cooking” by Deakla Keydar (Levinsky Park)

Part II: Estrangements

“Clear Recent History” by Gon Ben Ari (Magen David Square)

“Saïd the Good” by Antonio Ungar (Ajami, Jaffa)

“Swirl” by Silje Bekeng (Rothschild Boulevard)

“My Father’s Kingdom” by Shimon Adaf (Tel Kabir)

“Who’s a Good Boy!” by Julia Farmentto (The Opera Tower)

Part III: Corpses

“The Tour Guide” by Yoav Katz (Neve Sha’anan)

“Death in Pajamas” by Alex Epstein (Masarik Square)

“The Expendables” by Gai Ad (Ben Zion Boulevard)

“Allergies” by Etgar Keret (Florentin)

“Center” by Assaf Gavron (Dizengoff Center)

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