A Horse Walks Into a Bar

Author: David Grossman
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1910702935
Category : Comedians
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
A Guardian and New Statesman Book of the Year 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 on stage; 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 read. 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.

More Than I Love My Life

Author: David Grossman
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0593318919
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
"From the internationally best-selling author--and revered moral voice--a remarkable novel of suffering, love, and healing, the story of three generations of women and a secret that needs to be told. The story was inspired by the life of a friend and confidante of David Grossman who, in the late 1940s, was imprisoned and tortured on the notorious Goli Otok, a barren island prison off the coast of Croatia. Grossman's telling focuses on three strong women--Vera, 90; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at 39 years old is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili--abandoned when she was just three by Nina--has been close to her grandmother throughout her life. With Gili making the arrangements, they travel together back to Goli ("the Adriatic Alcatraz"), where Vera was imprisoned, enslaved, and tortured for three years as a young wife, when she refused to betray her husband and denounce him as an enemy of the people. This unlikely journey, documented by Gili's camera, lays bare the intertwining of fear, love, and mercy, and the complex overlapping demands of romantic and parental passion. With flashbacks to the stalwart Vera protecting what was most precious on the wretched rock where she was held, and Grossman's fearless examination of the human heart, this swift novel will thrill his many readers and bring new ones into the fold"--

The Only Daughter

Author: A.B. Yehoshua
Publisher: Halban Publishers
ISBN: 1912600145
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
Rachele Luzzatto is the only daughter of a Jewish family in northern Italy. Curious and intelligent, she is caught between her interest in religions – her own and others – and her father's violent rejection of them all. A disagreement ensues between them about the part she is given in the school nativity play. At the same time, she discovers that her father is ill; the severity of his illness is only revealed to her very gradually while her teacher, various members of her family and even her rabbi offer her wide-ranging and humane support. A.B. Yehoshua paints a complex, and humorous, picture of conflicting religious identities and historical memory in this tender character study of a young girl at the threshold of adulthood.

Lion's Honey

Author: David Grossman
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847676871
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Book Description
In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story of Samson: his battle with the lion, the three hundred burning foxes, the women he bedded, the one he loved and who betrayed him and the destruction of the temple. It reveals the journey of a lonely and tortured soul, whose search for a true home echoes our own private struggles.

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal

Author: Dorthe Nors
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 155597998X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
A smart, witty novel of driving lessons and vertigo, short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize Sonja is ready to get on with her life. She’s over forty now, and the Swedish crime novels she translates are losing their fascination. She sees a masseuse, tries to reconnect with her sister, and is finally learning to drive. But under the overbearing gaze of her driving instructor, Sonja is unable to shift gears for herself. And her vertigo, which she has always carefully hidden, has begun to manifest at the worst possible moments. Sonja hoped her move to Copenhagen years ago would have left rural Jutland in the rearview mirror. Yet she keeps remembering the dramatic landscapes of her childhood—the endless sky, the whooper swans, the rye fields—and longs to go back. But how can she return to a place that she no longer recognizes? And how can she escape the alienating streets of Copenhagen? In Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, Dorthe Nors brings her distinctive blend of style, humor, and insight to a poignant journey of one woman in search of herself when there’s no one to ask for directions.

The Essential Fergus the Horse

Author: Jean Abernethy
Publisher: Trafalgar Square Books
ISBN: 164601233X
Category : Pets
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
In the late 1990s, a little bay horse with white socks and a blaze was born. Dubbed “Fergus,” he has now traveled the world many times over by print, web, and satellite, inspired a line of merchandise, and gained a devoted following in the hundreds-of-thousands on Facebook and other social media. Who is this horse and how can we explain his magnetism? What makes him so special? Fergus the Horse (Equus hilarious) is the creation of Jean Abernethy, and the truth is, he isn’t meant to represent any one breed or discipline. Perhaps it’s this generic “everyhorse” quality that’s led to his popularity. “When fans write, ‘Fergus reminds me of my horse,’ I cannot be paid a higher compliment,” says Abernethy. And it’s his expressiveness, honesty, charm, and keen sense of humor that truly wins our hearts. Now Abernethy has brought together the backstory of Fergus the Horse—how he came to be, his early years, the history of his “friends”—and combined it with his “greatest hits,” including most-loved comic strips, some personal sketches, and brand new additions. The result is a lively, colorful, highly illustrated treasury that will entertain anyone with an eye for a horse and a need for a laugh.

Liberty

Author: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473548551
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 94

Book Description
Why should one half be free to live, while the other is doomed to watch silently from the sidelines? In this visionary collection, Virginia Woolf leads us on a transformative journey through the liberating powers of the mind. From an exploration of why women were barred from writing and under what conditions they might break free, to the solace derived from haunting London's streets, these essays and stories present Woolf at her most impassioned, rendering the pursuit of liberty one of life's most poetic adventures. Selected from the books A Room of One's Own, The Waves and Street Haunting and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Love by Jeanette Winterson Home by Salman Rushdie Language by Xiaolu Guo Race by Toni Morrison

Falling Out of Time

Author: David Grossman
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0099583720
Category : Bereavement
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
In Falling Out of Time, David Grossman has created a genre-defying drama - part play, part prose, pure poetry - to tell the story of bereaved parents setting out to reach their lost children. It begins in a small village, in a kitchen, where a man announces to his wife that he is leaving, embarking on a journey in search of their dead son.The man - called simply the 'Walking Man' - paces in ever-widening circles around the town. One after another, all manner of townsfolk fall into step with him (the Net Mender, the Midwife, the Elderly Maths Teacher, even the Duke), each enduring his or her own loss. The walkers raise questions of grief and bereavement: Can death be overcome by an intensity of speech or memory? Is it possible, even for a fleeting moment, to call to the dead and free them from their death? Grossman's answer to such questions is a hymn to these characters, who ultimately find solace and hope in their communal act of breaching deathâe(tm)s hermetic separateness. For the reader, the solace is in their clamorous vitality, and in the gift of Grossmanâe(tm)s storytelling âe" a realm where loss is not merely an absence, but a life force of its own.

Be My Knife

Author: David Grossman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466803711
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
The international bestseller Be My Knife is a compelling love story from David Grossman, the leading Israeli novelist of his generation "We could be like two people who inject themselves with truth serum, and at long last have to tell it--the truth. I want to be able to say to myself, 'I bled truth with her,' yes, that's what I want. Be a knife for me, and I, I swear, will be a knife for you." An awkward, neurotic seller of rare books writes a desperate letter to a beautiful stranger whom he sees at a class reunion. This simple, lonely attempt at seduction begins a love affair of words between Yair and Miriam, two married, middle-aged adults, dissatisfied with their lives, yearning for the connection that has always eluded them--and, eventually, reawakened to feelings that they thought had passed them by. Their correspondence unfolds into an exchange of their most naked confessions: of desire, childhood tragedies, joys, and humiliations. Through the dialogue between Yair--a family man and surprisingly successful adulterer, whose complex, guarded letters reveal a life of secrets kept from the people closest to him--and Miriam, at first deceptively open and warm, who fills her life with distraction to avoid a past full of painful secrets, Be My Knife explores the nature and the limits of intimacy. A deep departure from David Grossman's previous work, Be My Knife is his subtlest, most passionate novel yet.

Woman Walks into a Bar

Author: Rowan Coleman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147672525X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 107

Book Description
From the international bestselling author of The Home for Broken Hearts, a moving, funny, and heartwarming e-novella about the bumpy road toward Mr. Right—and how true love comes along when you least expect it. Twenty-eight-year-old single mother Sam spends her days working in the local supermarket and her Friday nights out with her friends, letting her hair down at the White Horse. Life has never been easy for Sam, but she’s always hoped that one day she’ll meet The One. After a series of terrible dates with men she’s met through an Internet dating agency, she’s starting to lose heart—until her friends tell her they’ve set her up on a blind date. Sam is horrified but finally she agrees to go—after all, you never know when you might meet the man of your dreams…