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A Horse Walks into a Bar

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A Horse Walks into a Bar

By: David Grossman, Jessica Cohen - translation
Narrated by: Joe Barrett
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About this listen

Winner of the International Man Booker Prize 2017.

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

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 onstage - 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 listen. 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.

©2017 David Grossman (P)2017 Random House AudioBooks Fiction Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary Satire Comedy Funny

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All stars
Most relevant
A great exploration of infectious emotion and story telling provided in a unique setting. Narration could be slightly improved with an accent or speech pitch change between the 2 narrators to reduce confusion. Everyone should read or listen to this

Creative brilliance

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A night of stand-up comedy spirals into the depths of despair. A life that started with abuse and bullying is exposed on the stage, through humour and despair, at times deeply intertwined. Beautifully and movingly written and narrated, this is a brilliant story of an intimate visit by a judge to a comedy club to see a friend from his youth unveil aspects of his life and relationships. Guilt, intimacy, morality and humour are shared on the stage and off.

A fitting winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize.

Compelling listening, probably worth a repeat to appreciate the layers and lives exposed one evening in a small comedy club in a small coastal town in Israel by a small, terminally ill, bitterly witty, falling apart comic.

Superb, intimate and moving

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The story is great, but it was very difficult for me to surpass the hoarse voice of the narrator... 🙁

Terrible narrator, such a shame

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Brilliant but deeply painful novel. I hated the narrator at first and almost stopped reading. But then I came to think the narrator’s voice was coherent with the story - I felt I was being flayed by that voice, or was it the story?Still I wouldn’t read anything else read by this narrator.

Excruciating

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This book, justifiably, won the Man Booker prize as it is a very original format and very well written. I, personally, found it quite unsettling as it deals with past issues that most of us would rather forget. The story takes the shape of a stand-up comic more or less telling the story of his life during a single performance. In the audience are 2 people from his past, a judge and a female dwarf lady who was a neighbour when he was a boy. A lot of the "reminiscences" make very uncomfortable reading as they lay bare the souls of both the comedian (Dovie) and his one one time "best friend", a retired judge. The lady dwarf has neither forgotten nor forgiven anything. The audience is, to my mind, just a reflection of how we try and deal with uncomfortable truths and memories. An unusual but quite brilliant book. It is not a page turner nor one you would like to read while relaxing on the beach but if you get through it, you will feel enriched.

Life as a stand-up comedy

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