Dad Runs Away with the Circus

Etgar Keret is a satiric novelist, director, and screenwriter, born in Ramat Gan. His second book, Gaguai leKising’er (Missing Kissinger), was published in 1994, and was a bestseller. Keret has written books for children as well as comic-style books. He also has directed and written plays and satire for television. He won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature for 1996, and in 2007, he received the Cannes Film Festival’s Camera d’Or Award for the feature-length film Meduzot (Jellyfish), which he co-directed with his wife, Shira Geffen.

Rutu Modan (also known as Rutho Modan) is an Israeli graphic designer and illustrator. She studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and after graduation, created comic strips for Israel's leading daily newspapers and co-edited the Israeli edition of MAD magazine. She was a founder of ACTUS TRAGICUS Publishing House for alternative comic artists in 1995. In 1996, she published a graphic novel with Israeli author Etgar Keret, Nobody Said It Was Going To Be Fun. Modan contributes to magazines and periodicals around the world, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Le Monde, and others. Her four published graphic novels include the award-winning Exit Wounds (2007). She has been a chosen artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation since 2005.