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A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman
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A Horse Walks into a Bar

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Narrator Joe Barrett

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Translator Jessica Cohen
Length 5 hours 49 minutes
Language English
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Summary

Random House presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman, read by Joe Barrett.

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017


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 โ€“ charming, erratic, repellent โ€“ 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 doesnโ€™t know whether to laugh or cry โ€“ and all this in the presence of a former childhood friend who is trying to understand why heโ€™s been summoned to this performance.

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Audiobook details

Author:

Narrator:
Joe Barrett

ISBN:
9781473554610

Length:
5 hours 49 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Random House

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

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Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

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Reviews

Unrelentingly claustrophobicโ€ฆ The violence that A Horse Walks Into A Bar explores is more private and intimate. Its central interest is not the vicious treatment of vulnerable others but the cruelty that wells up within families, circulates like a poison in tight-knit groups, and finally turns inward against the selfโ€ฆ Strategic weaving together of manic humour and tearsโ€ฆ Searing and poignant. Brilliant, blisteringโ€ฆ With Dovaleh, Grossman has created a character whoโ€™s captivating and horrific and a stand-up routine thatโ€™s disgusting and authentically human. I can hardly say how the book achieves its bewitching effects. It all happened so fast. Unless pop lyricists have the lock on the Nobel prize in literature from now on, then a leading future candidate must be David Grossman. Much of it is extremely funny, but itโ€™s also tightly controlled and carefully pacedโ€ฆ Few writers hold a more unflinching mirror up to Israeli society than Grossmanโ€ฆ [A Horse Walks into a Bar] is a work of sombre brilliance and disquieting rage, an unsparing exploration of the seductive spell of escapism and โ€œthe corruption that is in cynicism.โ€ This is a virtuoso piece of writing, a whirlwind of laughter and tears that sucks you in and makes you hold your breath. A writerly tour de force that would be unbearably painful, were it not also so generously humane. A short, shocking masterpiece. 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. David Grossmanโ€™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 Grossmanโ€™s bravado and to his innovation as a storytellerโ€ฆ A Horse Walks into a Barโ€ฆis unlike anything Grossman has written, or anything I have read. It is a packed explosive, multi-resonant, daring and exciting. Grossmanโ€™s new novel depicts a cruel demeaning stand-up actโ€ฆand 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. Expand reviews
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