This is a novel for our new Age of Offence – offence easily taken and endlessly performed. 'What is he selling himself?' These are important questions at this moment in history, a time of trickery and lies. 'What is he selling them?' wonders the judge. Sometimes we can only apprehend these truths through story – and Grossman, like Dovaleh, has become a master of the truth-telling tale. This isn’t just a book about Israel: it’s about people and societies horribly malfunctioning. It is a book about art, and the relationship of suffering to art. Grossman does make a few concessions to the reader, who might – understandably – come looking for humour in a book about a comic.But Grossman’s true interests lie elsewhere: A Horse Walks into a Bar is not a book about standup comedy. As with all good parables, it requires the reader to do some work in order to understand its meaning. A Horse Walks into a Bar – again translated by Jessica Cohen, who has long proved herself capable of keeping up with Grossman’s twists and turns of style – is more like a parable, about the loss of parents and the losses of a nation. Grossman no longer writes what we traditionally think of as novels: he has transcended genre or rather, he has descended deep into the vaults beneath.
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