A Horse Walks Into A Bar

Author: David Grossman

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $39.99 AUD
  • :
  • : 9781910702932
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Jonathan Cape Ltd
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  • : 0.372
  • : September 2016
  • : 222mm X 138mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 39.99
  • : October 2016
  • : January 2020
  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : David Grossman
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  • : Hardback
  • : 1611
  • :
  • : English
  • : 892.437
  • :
  • :
  • : 208
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Barcode 9781910702932
9781910702932

Description

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. Dovale Gee, 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, Dovale Gee 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.

Promotion info

A change of direction for the extraordinary David Grossman - a heartbreaking, visceral novel about a stand-up comedian


long listed 2017 Man Booker

Awards

Long-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2017.

Reviews

"David Grossman tells a story that is so emotional that you feel obliged to look away from time to time or to even put away the book once in a while so you can breathe again and so you can prepare yourself for the next confrontation with yourself and the world around you." De Morgen "David Grossman's new novel runs on a high voltage line, operated by a frantic, mesmerising and almost unbearable energy. An ongoing feeling of astonishment accompanies you throughout the read, and it is linked to Grossman's bravado and to his innovation as a storyteller... A Horse Walks into a Bar...is unlike anything Grossman has written, or anything I have read. It is a packed explosive, multi-resonant, daring and exciting." -- Omri Herzog Ha'aretz "Grossman's new novel depicts a cruel demeaning stand-up act...and yet this is not a book about the violence of man but rather on the human inside - and this is what turns Grossman to a truly great author." -- Nurit Gertz Walla!

Author description

David Grossman is the bestselling author of numerous works, which have been translated into thirty-six languages. His most recent novels were To the End of the Land, described by Jacqueline Rose as 'without question one of the most powerful and moving novels I have ever read', and Falling Out of Time. He is the recipient of the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the 2010 Frankfurt Peace Prize.