Keret and Kashua: Locating the Dialogue

• In Event: Thinking and Writing Across the Jewish-Arab Divide

Abstract

Over the years, Etgar Keret and Sayed Kashua have held a conversation in public and in private, in writing and in person, in reality and in fiction. Their ongoing dialogue has functioned as a reflection of Israeli concerns, as well as a mirror of the stagnation of the larger dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian authorities. Moreover, their conversation is a potent reminder of the importance as well as challenges to communication between Jewish and non-Jewish Israeli individuals.

Relying upon extensive research of their works, in this paper I will explore shifts in the use of locations as representations of individual and collective identity, on the backdrop of the conversation between the two authors. Specifically, I will focus on locations in Keret’s THE SEVEN GOOD YEARS (2105) and Kashua’s TRACK CHANGES (2017). THE SEVEN GOOD Years focuses on the seven years between the birth of Keret’s son and the death of his father. We accompany Keret as he meanders between Israeli cities and various conferences and lectures abroad, and join a vividly depicted visit to a strange house built in Keret’s honor in Warsaw. The voyage from life to death is outlined as a spatial journey, as Keret illustrates the profound links between space and identity. TRACK CHANGES follows an Israeli Palestinian from Tirah, his hometown, via Jerusalem, where he studied, to Illinois, where he resides with his family. The novel utilizes the spatial dislocation to offer a tentative restorative stability in the protagonist’s identity. The comparative analysis of depictions of locations reveals the similarities and differences in the authors’ exploration of individual and collective identities.

THE SEVEN GOOD YEARS was not published in Israel, and TRACK CHANGES was written in Hebrew, and has yet to be translated into English. Hence, the conversation between the two novels can only occur through the mediation of the two authors’ bilingual readership. This suggests a unique bridge between the two authors, which emphasizes the importance of the communication between their readers. The dialogue is located in the readers’ sphere, and it is our responsibility to continue the conversation.

Author

• Vered Weiss, San Francisco State University