What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories (20 page)
Read What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories Online
Authors: Nathan Englander
Tags: #Literary, #Jewish, #Short Stories, #Short Stories (Single Author), #Fiction
Still, every Friday, Etgar packed up Tendler’s fruit and vegetables. And in that bag Etgar would add, when he had them, a pineapple or a few fat mangoes dripping honey. Handing it to Tendler, Etgar would say, “
Kach
, Professor. Take it.” This, even after his father had died.
With deepest gratitude, I’d like to thank my truly-limitless-in-her-faith-and-inexhaustible-in-her-patience agent, Nicole Aragi, and the trusty Robin to her Batman, one Ms. Christie Hauser. Equally abundant thanks go to my amazing editor, Jordan Pavlin, who came to my first-ever reading and has offered a golden ear ever since. I’m much obliged to editorial assistant Leslie Levine, as well as all the fine folk at Knopf, especially Barbara de Wilde (who has designed all three covers) and Sara Eagle (spelled like the bird, as her voice mail attests). A huge thanks to Merle Englander, who read these stories forward and back, and who can spot a missing comma at a thousand yards. The same with Rachel Silver, who has the book’s dedication, but belongs here, too. To my personal physician, Daniel Brodie; and to my first reader (and second opinion), Chris Adrian—a debt of gratitude is owed. And likewise to a truly generous soul, and my hairiest muse, Etgar Keret, who inspired not one
story in this book but two. Finally, if you leave Etgar’s apartment in Tel Aviv, head over to the central bus station, and take the #405 up the mountain to Jerusalem, you’ll reach the man farthest away that I’d like to acknowledge, and that is Joel Weiss, who, when it comes to facts Hebraic, puts Google to shame.
Nathan Englander
is the author of the internationally bestselling story collection
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
and the novel
The Ministry of Special Cases
. Translated into more than a dozen languages, Englander was selected as one of 20 Writers for the 21st Century by
The New Yorker
and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and the Sue Kaufman Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
The Ministry of Special Cases
A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2012
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
This ebook first published in 2012
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Copyright © 2012 Nathan Englander
The right of Nathan Englander to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 0 297 86771 5
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Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
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