TEL AVIV NOIR

Though sometimes overshadowed internationally by Jerusalem, Tel Aviv is in many ways the cultural capital of Israel, and is home to many of the country’s best writers. This unparalleled collection gives insight into the daily life of Israelis, albeit through a noir lens. Simultaneous publication with Tehran Noir (a controversial combination) will help draw attention to both books.

Featuring brand-new stories by: Etgar Keret, Gadi Taub, Lavie Tidhar, Deakla Keydar, Matan Hermoni, Julia Fermentto, Gon Ben Ari, Shimon Adaf, Alex Epstein, Antonio Ungar, Gai Ad, Assaf Gavron, Silje Bekeng, and Yoav Katz.

From the introduction:
"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 DJ 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 the bar of a café targeted by suicide bombing, 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 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 lan- guages 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.

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 Sto- ries, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, and Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels.