A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman

A Horse Walks into a Bar is a novel by David Grossman. It is presented as a work of fiction centred on a stand-up performance.

Synopsis

In a small Israeli city, comedian Dov Greenstein performs a night of stand-up in a little dive, with a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, in the audience. Lazar knew Dov as a boy, as do a handful of others who remember him as an awkward, scrawny child who walked on his hands to confound neighbourhood bullies.

As the evening unfolds, Dov’s routine shifts between hilarity and hysteria and becomes a kind of memoir. He revisits the terrors of his childhood, including his mother, a Holocaust survivor who needs constant monitoring, and his punishing father, a striver who struggles to understand his creative son. Recalling a week at a military camp for youth, Dov returns to what Lazar witnessed as the central event of his childhood, while Lazar confronts his own part in the comedian’s story of loss and survival.