Book Review: The Nimrod Flip Out by Etgar Keret

* Name: The Nimrod Flip Out
* Author: Etgar Keret
* Year Published: 2002
* ISBN: 0-374-22243-6
* Details: Paperback, 167 pages
* Awards/Recognitions: None
* BTL Recommends: YES
* Key Locations: Various – Israel, India, etc.
* Review: I got this trip quite a while back at a bookstore in Seattle, Washington. It was an impulse buy. I wasn’t really looking to buy a book, just a cup of coffee. I’m glad I did. The Nimrod Flip Out is a collection of short stories that are different from anything I’ve ever read. When I read the blurb on the back that claimed, “Keret can do more with six strange and funny paragraphs than most writers can do with 600 pages,” I was certainly intrigued. So I bought the book. The situations in a majority of the stories are absurd, but you can’t help but feel a deep sympathy for the characters. In the first story, Fatso, you can really picture a short balding man with a ravenous appetite and love of soccer. I was horrified when I understood who the narrator killed in Your Man and I wanted to cry for the boy in Glittery Eyes.

Keret manages to induce this sort of sympathy while writing the most macho material this side of Hemmingway. I REALLY recommend this book.