by דויד גרוסמן
First published 2017
Dov Greenstein takes the stage at a shabby club in a small Israeli city for another night of stand-up comedy. The aging performer spots a familiar face in the sparse crowd: Avishai Lazar, now a district court justice, who knew Dov as a child. As Dov works through his routine, his jokes gradually transform into something rawer and more personal. He tells stories about his mother, a Holocaust survivor who needed constant care, and his demanding father who never understood his artistic son. The performance becomes a confession as Dov recalls a devastating week at youth military camp where Lazar witnessed a traumatic event that shaped Dov's entire life. The audience shifts uncomfortably as comedy bleeds into memoir. Lazar sits frozen, remembering his own role in what happened to the scrawny boy who once walked on his hands to escape bullies. What begins as entertainment becomes a reckoning with childhood trauma, survival, and the ways people carry their deepest wounds.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: confession, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Israel
Period: 21st-century
193 pages · Paperback · Knopf
Content warnings: abuse, mental-illness