Etgar Keret memoir contends for Russian award
‘Seven Good Years’ is one of 28 novels up for $20,000 foreign literature prize
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s 2014 novel, “The Seven Good Years: A Memoir,” has been named as a foreign literature contender for the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award, named after the Leo Tolstoy Estate.
There are 28 contenders from all over the globe, and the winning author will take home 1.2 million rubles ($20,000), with 500,000 rubles ($8,500) set aside for the Russian translator.
The book is Keret’s first full-length work of nonfiction, in English, and its title — a play on the biblical story of Pharaoh’s dream about seven years of plenty and seven years of famine — refers to the time between the birth of Keret’s son and the death of his father.
Keret was awarded the $100,000 Charles Bronfman Prize in 2016 for his works of literature conveying Jewish values across cultures.
In 2016, the Yasnaya Polyana foreign literature award went to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, and in 2015 to American writer Ruth Ozeki.
The organizers of the prize are the Yasnaya Polyana State Museum and Samsung Electronics.
