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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Books podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor for The Spectator, and this week I'm very pleased to be joined by Etgar Kerat, the Israeli author of short stories, whose latest collection is Fly Already.

Edgar, welcome.

How did you start writing short stories?

I mean, what is it that makes someone a short story writer?

I think that it comes from all those things that I can't figure out myself. Many of my short stories just start with me trying to explain something to somebody and

finding myself choked and very emotional about something that I cannot

communicate rationally. And this is when I sit down and I start writing a story without knowing

a lot about the plot, just knowing some kind of an image or a basic situation. And as the story

kind of unfolds, I understand better.

They seem to be all sort of set in, you know, you've got one in which the narrator's father's just turned into a rabbit, and then others that seem to be much more kind of,

as it were, set in what's recognizably a non-magical real world.

Do you sort of have a vibe before you start any given story, which world it's going to

be set in?

No, because I think that what creates the story word is the emotional DNA.

And for me, I can tell you about the story if it's funny or if it's sad or if it's hopeful,

but the fact that if somebody levitates there or just

takes the train, it's something that I need to think about. It's not really the high point

of the story. It's kind of a nonchalant magic realism, you know, those fantastical things

...