Keret's writing style is lean, using everyday language, slang, and dialect. His work has influenced many writers of his generation, as well as bringing a renewed surge in popularity for the short story form in Israel in the second half of the 1990s. According to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Etgar Keret was criticized by linguist Menahem Zevi Kaddari "for using a 'thin language' – as opposed to Shmuel Yosef Agnon". Zuckermann defends Keret and argues that "Kaddari compares Keret to Agnon as if they wrote in two different registers of the same language" whereas "Keret is, in fact, writing in a different language. Whilst Agnon attempts to write in (Mishnaic) Hebrew, which is obviously not his mother tongue (Yiddish), Keret writes authentically in his native Israeli." Zuckermann provides an example: when Agnon wrote, in 1944, אשתו מתה עליו ishtó méta alàv, literally "his wife died/dies on him", he meant "he became a widower". When Keret says so, he means "his wife loves him very much". Awards Keret has received the Prime Minister's award for literature, as well as the Ministry of Culture's Cinema Prize. In 2006 he was chosen as an outstanding artist of the prestigious Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation. In 1993 he won the first prize in the Alternative Theater Festival in Akko for Entebbe: A Musical, which he wrote with Jonathan Bar Giora. The short film Malka Lev Adom (Skin Deep, 1996), which Keret wrote and directed with Ran Tal, won an Israel Film Academy award and first place in the Munich International Festival of Film Schools. The film Jellyfish, a joint venture for Keret and his wife received the Camera d'Or prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Missing Kissinger won the 2008 JQ Wingate Prize. Keret was on the jury for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2010, Keret received the Chevalier (Knight) Medallion of France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has received the Charles Bronfman Prize for 2016. Keret received the 2018 Sapir Prize for Literature for his short-story collection Takalah be-Katzeh ha-Galaksiya (Hebrew title: תקלה בקצה הגלקסיה, "A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy") whose English translation, Fly Already, won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. This book also appeared in a Bulgarian translation in 2020. Inspirations Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Miller's Crossing by the