None of the more than thirty stories collected in this volume exceed five pages, and some are only one and a half. Because Etgar Keret, one of the great Israeli authors, widely translated and published in publications like The New Yorker or Le Monde, is content with the shortest distance to leave us laughing in the darkest of darkness. By drawing, with few strokes, an alternative world, an AI-made husband simulation, disobedient robots, or a couple of young people doing mitzvahs (good deeds) while high on MDMA, he touches on serious or directly metaphysical themes with the apparent lightness of a koan, planting a seed that contains the power of an exemplary story. The speed with which he resolves extreme situations with the tools of comedy and realistic fiction, combined with a certain futuristic anticipation, turns these stories into something that resembles science fiction, but isn't quite, because the future he describes is too close to us. Keret moves comfortably between genres and worlds, as if he had had the opportunity to travel through the multiverse and returned with a basket full of black humor stories, the weapon of intelligent pessimists.

"If you'll take one piece of advice, don't miss this book," he assured a few days ago Keret appears punctually on his computer screen in Tel Aviv, the city where he grew up and where he still lives and teaches creative writing. It's eleven in the morning, but he's been up for hours: he has a habit of going out at a quarter past seven to take a walk on the beach, which is ten minutes from his home. "I'm sorry I haven't been to Barcelona in so long. Maybe with the next book they'll invite me," he admits, before offering a small sample of his irony. "For now, with things the way they are in my country, it's normal for you to be afraid of someone like me coming."