[Paul Bunyan]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...078645,00.html

so we're agreed.

[9mm_fan]

I've read most everything Keret. I still don't get him. Ok tip of the hat to Kafka maybe but "Happy Campers" and "Pipes" seem to be a lot more shallow than they appear.

[9mm_fan]

No I mean there's a lot less there than one first thinks. Short fiction is one thing, these seem almost like punchlines. I just don't see why people kvell over it.

[Slonopotam845]

I am more familiar with Oz and Yehoshua, the rest of the writers are unknown to me.

I've found "My Michael" quite confusing for some reason. I have some kind of inherent dislike for Oz's writing style I think.

I keep hearing of a very young writer, a story writer, who blows away literary conventions, though I haven't read anything yet and I can't remember his name - someone very loved by the very young people in Israel - maybe he is Etgar Keret of whom you are talking about, Womble? Yep, sounds like Keret to me.

[MannoFr]

"Happy Campers" and "Pipes" seem to be a lot more shallow than they appear.

It's my bad English that I don't understand you here - do you mean they are more shallow than they pretend to be?

[9mm_fan]

My first recommendation to anyone interested in Israeli literature or cinema is to check out anything by Ephraim Kishon, probably one of the funniest writers I've ever read. A good book for a foreigner to begin with would be "The Seasick Whale: An Israeli abroad" (1965). That should give you a perspective on how we Israelis see the outside world.

[tgs]

I haven't yet read any Amos Oz or Leon Uris but I'll get round to it as soon as possible.

I read a novel by Zeruya Shalev called "Love Life" which was an excellent piece of writing. I also like the author Shifra Horn - I tend to enjoy reading female writers.

Everything I've read by Isaac Bashevis Singer has been great - he wasn't Israeli, of course, but he wrote in Yiddish.

Oz is a rather difficult read, at times deliberately unpleasant. Same with A. B. Yehoshua. They are well-liked by the critics, but I have learned to avoid them.

Other Israeli writers I can recommend are Etgar Keret, Aaron Meged and OF COURSE Shai Agnon (he is a MUST READ for every Jew on this planet, I think). Also check out Nina Voronel's "The Witch and The Paratrooper" and "The Butterfly's fly"- very deep, yet fun to read and absolutely unique in style.

[Paul Bunyan]

[QUOTE=Inocentia]

I've found "My Michael" quite confusing for some reason. I have some kind of inherent dislike for Oz's writing style I think.

Me too, but he explains it in the "Tale..."

Writing that needs explaining is not the kind of writing I like to read.

any writer that you can stamp "postmodernist" on in Israel? I know the term is highly debated by scholars still, but Oz, Grossman, Yehoshua, and yellowish Shifra Horn, the best known, are still conformist writers in comparison with how literature is written elsewhere... I avoid postmodernism like a plague that it is.