The Seven Good Years

A brilliant, hilarious memoir from a master storyteller. The seven years between the birth of Etgar Keret's son, Lev, and the death of his father were good years, but still full of reasons to worry.

Lev was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. Etgar's father became sick. And Etgar has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitic remarks both real and imagined, and, perhaps most worrisome of all, a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to chase him to the grave.

Emerging from these darkly absurd circumstances is a series of funny, touching ruminations on everything from his three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind Angry Birds. The Seven Good Years is a tender and entertaining tale of a father bringing up his son in a country beset by wars and alarms. Told in Etgar's inimitable style, this wise, witty memoir is full of wonder and love, poignant insights, and irrepressible humour.

Moving deftly between the personal and the political, the playful and the profound, it reveals the human need to find good in the least likely places, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our capricious world.