A Horse Walks into a Bar: David Grossman - Hardcover

Grossman, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0451493974 ISBN 13: 9780451493972

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2017

Synopsis

**WINNER OF THE 2017 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE**

The award-winning and internationally acclaimed author of the To the End of the Land now gives us a searing short novel about the life of a stand-up comic, as revealed in the course of one evening&;s performance. In the dance between comic and audience, with barbs flying back and forth, a deeper story begins to take shape&;one that will alter the lives of many of those in attendance.

In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of stand-up. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as an awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, as it teeters between hilarity and hysteria, Dov&;s patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood: we meet his beautiful flower of a mother, a Holocaust survivor in need of constant monitoring, and his punishing father, a striver who had little understanding of his creative son. Finally, recalling his week at a military camp for youth&;where Lazar witnessed what would become the central event of Dov&;s childhood&;Dov describes the indescribable while Lazar wrestles with his own part in the comedian&;s story of loss and survival. Continuing his investigations into how people confront life&;s capricious battering, and how art may blossom from it, Grossman delivers a stunning performance in this memorable one-night engagement (jokes in questionable taste included).

About this title

About the Author

DAVID GROSSMAN was born in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Rome's Premio per la Pace e l'Azione Umanitaria, the Premio Ischia--international award for journalism, Israel's Emet Prize, and the Albatross Prize given by the Günter Grass Foundation.

JESSICA COHEN was born in England, raised in Israel, and now lives in the United States. She has translated contemporary Israeli fiction, nonfiction and other creative works, including David Grossman's To the End of the Land.

From the Back Cover

The setting is a comedy club in a small Israeli town. An audience that has come expecting an evening of amusement instead sees a comedian falling apart on stage; an act of disintegration, a man crumbling, as a matter of choice, before their eyes. They could get up and leave, or boo and whistle and drive him from the stage, if they were not so drawn to glimpse his personal hell. Dovaleh G, a veteran stand-up comic - charming, erratic, repellent - exposes a wound he has been living with for years: a fateful and gruesome choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him. A Horse Walks into a Bar is a shocking and breathtaking read. Betrayals between lovers, the treachery of friends, guilt demanding redress. Flaying alive both himself and the people watching him, Dovaleh G provokes both revulsion and empathy from an audience that doesn't know whether to laugh or cry - and all this in the presence of a former childhood friend who is trying to understand why he's been summoned to this performance.

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451493974
• ISBN 13: 9780451493972
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 194