”My family right or wrong’’ is a book of short humorous stories. Every funny situation is linked to another funny situation from another story and all of them are related to real life events so everyone can find themselves in some of the stories.
Kishon lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and three children and he always wanted to give his family a good life even though he wasn’t always doing a very good job. The themes of the short stories are about children and relatives and they include everyday life in the city where a usual man is trying to stay honest between mean people.
The main character Kishon is trying to entertain the reader with the stories of a 5 member family that encounters interesting situations.
Every story starts in the same way. First they have a detail description of the problem. After that the problem is even more described with the introduction of the characters. The end is always negative for the main character but it is not a disaster, it is more of a funny event.
Kishones stories are well known for his simple dictionary. The humor is based on contrarieties until the problem becomes the part of the past. Usually it all ends how the main character did not plan it. Despite the disasters that come afterwards everything is comical.
Genre: short stories book
Place: Tel Aviv
Book Summary
Ephraim Kishon is the storyteller. He lives with his wife and three children Renana, Rafi and Amir in Israel’s city Tel Aviv. The family is maintained with his writer paycheck. While he is writing his wife is taking care of the children.
In the story ‘’Happy New Year’’ Kishon and his wife are planning on going to a friend’s house. It is already ten o’clock and they should get going but the wife complains that she has nothing to wear but in fact she has so much clothes she can’t even close the door of her closet. Soon she starts trying on different outfits and Kishon used that time to get shaved and dressed.
The wife is still trying on clothes and Kishon reads the newspaper. He was it was half past eleven and then tried to scare his wife by slamming the door like he’s leaving but it didn’t work. He managed to write a script and take a nap.
At two in the morning she said that she was ready but they couldn’t leave because his beard grew again. They had to wait for him now and the wife was impatient and complained that she always had to wait.
He said that the hardest job is to be a parent. In one of his stories little Renana only wants a soother and every time they lose it they go through a hilarious adventure to find it. The doctor stated that her behavior was normal and that it could be caused by a lack of parent love.
Another story involves household events. Kishon and his wife had some problems with their laundry machine. The named it Jonathan. He liked to jump around the house and when he met a new machine made in Italy he just disappeared.
The next story revolves around the way Israel people treat tourists and how they gave privileges to the foreigners so that Israel wouldn’t come off as an inhospitable environment. Kishon and his wife went to the lake to take a break. Because of the tourists they ended up in a worse room than expected and in the end they ended up on a raft.
Characters Analysis
Characters: Kishon, Rafi, Amir, Renana, the best wife in the whole world
Kishon is the main character and the storyteller. He earns by writing and with his best wife he takes care of his family. He sometimes gets into fights with his wife but in the end he always lets her get her way. Even though he is a famous writer in this book he writes about everyday situation with a simple tone. He uses his experiences as a source of humor. Kishon is described as a naïve person who will always take another person’s advice even though they may not help. He knows how to laugh at himself and somebody else without making it seem offensive.
Rafi, Renana and Amir are everyday kids whose experiences are described as hilarious events. The best example is Amir whose stickers collecting turned into the city fever.
The best wife in the world is a good mother that always finds something to complain about and she blames her husband for everything. She overreacts and makes a big deal out of nothing.
Ephraim Kishon Biography
Ephraim Kishon is a script writer and play writer from Israel. He was born in 1924 in Budapest where he went to school. In 1941 he wanted to go to a university but he was a Jew so at that time he was forbidden to attend a University.
Just before the war was over he was taken into a camp in Slovakia but he managed to run away to Budapest and he hid there until the war was over.
After that the soviets occupied the territory so he was in danger again. He was going to camp again but he managed to run away again.
While he was working for a Hungary newspaper he started his writing career. He decided to run away from the communistic Hungary and he went to Tel Aviv. He changed his name from Feren Hoffman to Ephraim Kishon. He kept on publishing his works under the new name.
Besides being successful as a writer he also made 5 successful movies. Some of his book are: Do not worry, He and she, Seven comedies, Hairy, hell…
He died in Switzerland in 2005.
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