Suddenly, A Knock At the Door

Etgar Keret's latest collection of off-kilter short stories bring a welcome sense of playful oddness to a genre that is the perfect vehicle for this sort of nimble invention. With the short form a really interesting writer like Keret can introduce an idea, explore it in close up for a page or three and then close the shutter abruptly. Here, it's tantalising, disconcerting and darkly funny in almost equal measure.

Like Ray Bradbury's best short science fiction, the speculative fantasy tales of Suddenly, A Knock at the Door  - a man's lies and excuses start to turn into reality; another discovers that his girlfriend has only ever been out with people called David - are rooted in some kind of realism, which means that however outrageous or unpleasant the premise of the story, it's impossible to shrug it off as a flight of fancy or a folly: many of the stories are set in named or recognisable Israeli cities and towns; likewise, Keret's prose (often described as 'lean') is firmly connected to the reality of ordinary dialogue and speech.

This is a fantastic collection, boiling over with wit and vision. The stories - nearly 40 of them - come thick and fast, leaving you dazed and dazzled by one brilliant, disconcerting idea followed by another. But in every story, there is also deep psychological insight and a profound appreciation of human feeling and emotion that is both moving and uncomfortably close to home.