The seven good years

Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry.

His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv.

His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president 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, tender ruminations on everything from his three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind Angry Birds.

Moving deftly between the personal and the political, the playful and the profound, The Seven Good Years takes a life-affirming look at the human need to find good in the least likely places, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our capricious world.