The Girl on the Fridge

Written by: Etgar Keret

First line: When you have an asthma attack, you can't breathe.

Why you should read this book: Keret's microfictions might be described as gritty, urban magical realism, or else as a series of disjointed, disquieting dreams, confronting materialism, racism, love, and loss with a casual disregard that illuminates its subject while glossing it over. Here, you'll find subatomic particles desperate for humans to understand them, a creature that eats the best part of your dreams, soldiers protecting themselves with a plastic vacuum seal. Life is horror-movie cheap, except when it is the most precious thing imaginable, and the world moves on, even when the impetus to move with it vanishes.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You've succeeded in getting yourself hopelessly lost in Thailand.