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Winner of the international man booker prize 2017-A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman

Comedy that will make you cry

David Grossman, a bestselling Israeli writer of fiction, non-fiction and children''s literature, recently won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for his novel, A Horse Walks into a Bar.

Comedy that will make you cry

Hometruth: Translator Jessica Cohen (L) and Israeli author David Grossman (R) with his book A Horse Walks Into a Bar. The themes in the novel encompass betrayal between lovers, the treachery of friends, guilt and redress Photo:AFP



 

David Grossman, a bestselling Israeli writer of fiction, non-fiction and children's literature, recently won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for his novel, A Horse Walks into a Bar. The novel has been translated into English by Jessica Cohen. Grossman's works have been translated into 36 languages. He has been the recipient of numerous global awards, 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 Frankfurt Peace Prize, and Israel's Emet Prize. 

Cohen, who was born in Colchester, England, but raised in Jerusalem, has previously translated Grossman's critically acclaimed To the End of the Land as well as work by other major Israeli writers including Etgar Keret, Rutu Modan, Dorit Rabinyan, Ronit Matalon, Amir Gutfreund, Tom Segev, and Golden Globe-winning director Ari Folman. 

A Horse Walks into a Bar unfolds over the course of one final show by stand-up comedian, Dovaleh Gee. Charming, erratic and repellent — Dovaleh 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. With themes that encompass betrayal between lovers, the treachery of friends, guilt and redress, A Horse Walks into a Bar is a shocking and breathtaking read. 

“This isn't just a book about Israel: it's about people and societies horribly malfunctioning. Sometimes we can only apprehend these truths through story - and Grossman, like Dovaleh, has become a master of the truth-telling tale,” says The Guardian.

Selected from 126 books by a panel of five judges, Nick Barley, who chaired the panel, found it "an ambitious high-wire act of a novel, and Grossman has pulled it off spectacularly.  The book shines a spotlight on the effects of grief, without any hint of sentimentality. The central character is challenging and flawed, but completely compelling. We were bowled over by Grossman's willingness to take emotional as well as stylistic risks: every sentence counts, every word matters in this supreme example of the writer's craft." 

Grossman deflected his own praise quite modestly but endowed his editor at Jonathan Cape, Dan Franklin, with the highest form of all Jewish praise — “he is”, said Grossman, “a mensch”. He was all praise for his fellow shortlistee Amos Oz, too, as simply 'my friend and teacher'. And he saved his last words of thanks for his main character, the flawed comedian Dovaleh G. “It was such a pleasure to write this character. Like a rider in a rodeo, you don't know when he will throw you off.”

The novel may be about a comedian but it is not a comic novel. Like all of Grossman's work — and this is his 11th novel — it is a work of great moral seriousness. The human condition, for Grossman, is something to be wondered at and explored but rarely something to be laughed at. He is entitled to smile now though, having seen off 125 other works of translated fiction to pick up the £50,000 prize which is, as the rules stipulate, shared half and half with Cohen as recognition of the vital role played by the translator. 

David Grossman is no stranger to awards, and not just Israeli ones, having won, among others, the JQ Wingate Prize twice, the 2010 Frankfurt Peace Prize, Italy's Premio Flaiano and been awarded the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His fiction has been translated into 36 languages but he is also a poet, a children's writer, an opera librettist, and a former child actor and radio host. 

A Horse Walks into a Bar describes an evening from hell when rather than hearing a stream of jokes the audience in a small-town comedy club is confronted by a man breaking down on stage in front of their repelled but fascinated eyes. On his 57th birthday Dovaleh Greenstein, 'Dovaleh G', the bespectacled, red braces and cowboy-boot wearing funny-man, starts off okay but then turns first on his audience — 'Why are you idiots laughing? That joke was about you!' — and then on himself. 

It soon becomes clear, amidst the heckling and booing, that something serious is going on. Witnessing the deteriorating scene and sharing the mounting sense of unease in the room is a retired district court justice, Avishai Lazar, a childhood friend who has been invited by Dovaleh, though he doesn't know why. What Lazar sees is 'a little rodent gnawing on himself' and the source of his self-lacerating it emerges is a choice between two people he had to make many years before, events in which Lazar too is implicated. 

What Dovaleh reveals under the spotlight is not just his soul but something too of dysfunctional societies and the state of Israel itself. Dov, for all his offensive stories-turned-rants, makes, indeed forces, his audience as well as himself face up to truths they would rather avoid. 

Translating from the Hebrew, Grossman's complex mix of quickfire jokes  and raw emotion is quite a feat. This is why Jessica Cohen — born in England, raised in Israel, and living in Denver - deserves her place in the limelight alongside the author. One of the themes of the novel is the role played by art — humour in Dovaleh's case — and in thinking of art's power to shapeshift, dissemble, create, reveal and unsettle it is impossible not to think of the writer and translator too.

— Based on inputs from http://themanbookerprize.com

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