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Israeli writer David Grossman won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in London for his novel A horse walks into a bar. It is the first time that an Israeli wins the award that is considered one of the most important ones in the world.
A Horse Walks Into a Bar tells the story about the stand-up comedian Dovaleh Gee from a small Israeli town who falls apart on stage in front of an audience. 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. The themes go from betrayal between lovers, the treachery of friends to guilt and redress.
Nick Barley, chair of the 2017 judge panel claimed: “David Grossman has attempted an ambitious high-wire act of a novel, and he’s pulled it off spectacularly. A Horse Walks into a Bar 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.”
“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,” The Guardian commented.
A horse walks into a bar was one amongst the six shortlisted books for this year’s award. Grossman’s competitors were his fellow Israeli author Amos Oz for Judas, Compass by Mathias Enard, The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors and Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin. Each of them as well as their translator automatically received £1.000.
The £50.000 cash award has been split between the 63 year-old author and translator Jessica Cohen. Grossman, who was born and is still based in Jerusalem, has been writing since the late 1970’s and has won several awards in Israel and around the world including the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Rome’s Premio per a Pace e l’Azione Umanitaria, the Frankfurt Peace Prize and the Emet Price in Israel. His books have been translated into 36 languages. It is only the second year that the Man Booker has been given to a single book. Before 2016, it was awarded every second year to an author’s entire body of work.
Grossman’s novel was chosen between 126 books by a panel of 5 judges, chaired by Nick Barley and consisting of Daniel Hahn, award-winning writer, editor and translator; Elif Shafak, prize-winning novelist and one of the most widely read writers in Turkey; Chika Unigwe, author of four novels and Helen Mort, poet who has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Prize and has won a Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award five times. To be considered for the prize, the books had to be translated into English language and be published in the UK between the 1st of May 2016 and the 30th of April 2017.
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