Israeli author David Grossman won the Man Booker International Prize on Wednesday for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar. 

He will share the £50,000 ($64,000) award with translator Jessica Cohen. Grossman is the first Israeli writer to win the prize.

The book unfolds over the course of a stand-up show during which comedian Dovelah Gee exposes a wound he has been living with for years and the difficult choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him.

“Thank you all. I will cherish this award and this evening,” Grossman said after receiving the prize at a ceremony in central London.

“I thank first of all my wonderful, devoted, translator Jessica Cohen,” the 63-year-old author said.

Judge Nick Barley said Grossman “attempted an ambitious high-wire act of a novel, and… pulled it off spectacularly”. “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,” Barley added.

b’US translator Jessica Cohen (left) and Israeli author David Grossman at the shortlist photocall for the Man Booker International Prize in London. (Daniel Leal-Olivas| Source: AFP’

Since he started writing in the late 1970s after being fired from public radio following anger over his critical coverage, Grossman has won numerous Israeli and international awards.

His 1986 novel See Under: Love is seen by a number of critics as his masterpiece, delving into the Holocaust and the generation of Jews that followed.

Other works have included The Yellow Wind, a prescient, non-fiction look at Israel’s occupation ahead of the first Palestinian intifada that erupted in 1987. His 2008 novel To the End of the Land, published after the death of his son Uri, contemplates the effects of war while portraying Israeli life.

Grossman’s works have been translated into more than 30 languages and he was also decorated with France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998.

(Feature Image Source: AFP)