Title: The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories Author: Etgar Keret Publisher: Picador Well thank Jimminey for this! Ballsy short fiction that doesn't shy from blood or sorrow, and written in taut, high-strung phrases that whip across the page. Keret, well known in his homeland of Israel but translated here for the first time, is a literary wunderkid, and it's about damn time. Example one: "For six months now she's been driving me nuts, sticking her fingers in her cunt after fucking to see if I really came, and instead of telling her off all I say is, "It's OK, honey, we're all a little insecure." Example two: "On my fifth birthday, they discovered that my mother had cancer, and the doctors said she had to have her uterus removed. It was a sad day....the doctor came out of the operating room with tears in his eyes. "Never have I seen such a beautiful uterus....I feel like a murderer."" So apart from the uterus, the vagina and the bus driver who wanted to be God, what else does he deal with? Demons who come to claim people's talents, but who are revealed to hate their job as much as anyone. Kids who push angels off buildings to see if they can fly, only to sneer at the angel's lies as he lies 5 stories below. And finally there's the majestic novella Kneller's Happy Campers, where suiciders wander a hellish heaven, working, fucking, or generally getting peeved when Kurt Cobain won't "stop bitching....sometimes he'll even ask the bartender to play one of his numbers...the last thing you give a shit about is somebody with nothing on his mind except singing about how unhappy he is." And there's a party dude called J who will perform miracles, except... Like the untranslated enfants terrible Benjamin Prado and Ray Loriga, Etgar Keret sucks you in and spits you out through his fiery prose. It's dangerous and delicious, just the way good literature should be.