Alex Epstein's very brief stories (some of them as short as one sentence) have been described as examples of the "philosophical, or allegorical short-short story", one of the primary types of short story common to contemporary Hebrew writing.[2] In a National Post review of Epstein's second English-language collection, writer Ian McGillis said that Epstein's works invited comparison to both "contemporary McSweeney's-style pranksters and the august lineage of Kafka, Borges and Bruno Schulz".[11] Likewise, The Forward named Epstein "Israel's Borges."[12] Epstein's work has been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, Portuguese and Russian. American publisher Clockroot Books published two translated collections of his work, Blue Has No South (2010) and Lunar Savings Time (2011).[13] His second collection was widely and well-reviewed in Publishers Weekly,[14]Three Percent,[15]The Millions,[16]Words Without Borders,[17] and elsewhere. An experimentalist both in terms of narrative and format, Epstein's literature app "True Legends" was made available in 2014 and reviewed by the LA Times.[18] Israel's premier daily newspaper, Haaretz, regularly publishes his stories under the title "Ktsartsarim" (short-shorts). The English Haaretz has also featured his work.[19] His microfiction has been the subject of at least one peer-reviewed academic article in Shofar (2015), "The Shape of Time in Microfiction: Alex Epstein and the Search for Lost Time."[20]
