a horse walks into a bar by david grossman

'I want you to look at me,' Greenstein tells him. Lazar asks Greenstein what the point is of the invitation. The judge and the comedian, 57-year-old Dovaleh Greenstein, who trades on divisive and offensive jokes, knew each other as boys, but have had no contact for over 40 years.

Plot Ī Horse Walks into a Bar is narrated by a retired district court judge, Avishai Lazar, who is invited out of the blue by a local comedian to attend his show, a stand-up routine in a bar in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya. The judges said they had been 'bowled over by Grossman's willingness to take emotional as well as stylistic risks'. The novel won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. Set in a stand-up comedy show in Israel that takes place over just two hours, the novel recounts the tale of a comic who faces a personal crisis while performing his routine, leading to a series of candid and chilling revelations about his past. The title is derived from a common bar joke. First published in Hebrew in 2014 by Ha'kibbutz Ha'meuchad as Sus echad nichnas lebar, the book was translated into English by Jessica Cohen, and published in the UK by Jonathan Cape in November 2016 and in the US by Alfred A. 10 November 2016 (London: Jonathan Cape), EnglishĪ Horse Walks into a Bar ( Hebrew: סוס אחד נכנס לבר) is a novel by Israeli author David Grossman.2014 (Tel Aviv: Ha'kibbutz Ha'meuchad), Hebrew.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. Betrayals between lovers, the treachery of friends, guilt demanding redress. 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.Ī Horse Walks into a Bar is a shocking and breathtaking read. 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. 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. The setting is a comedy club in a small Israeli town. WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

A horse walks into a bar by david grossman