A Horse Walks into a Bar

By: David Grossman, Jessica Cohen - translation

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

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

a touch of genius

what an excellent book.....I'm sure it will become a classic ...a rare experience.
Honestly, I needed to start and restart reading it from the beginning...because of it's massive tempo....#
I couldn't catch up the with this tempo..and sometime didn't catch the meanings and intents...
but once you get the gusto and adjust to the high tempo and dense content... you can't put it down from start to end.
The ´narrator did marvels with the text...and that is an underestimation. Joe Barrett performance makes this book an
unforgettable experience ...a rare experienced . He isn't a narrator...he is a perfomer, an actor.
So from now on, looking for more David Grossman and more Joe Barrett.

Outstanding.

You must listen to this. Excellent writing. You will need to listen to again. Outstanding book.

Wrenching but disappointing

I found this to be a rather difficult book to listen to, for a number of reasons. The character is so deeply flawed and grating, I had to force myself to sit through the first few chapters before the story "opened up" and the deeper meanings came through. I found the narration really irritating - the characters' voices are unconvincing, and it's often impossible to distinguish between the 2 main characters, they are made to sound almost identical. Finally I thought the end was quite disappointing after the wrenching roller-coaster ride of the last few chapters.