The Dog Synopsis
Longlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2014.
The new novel from Joseph O'Neill, his first since the Man Booker longlisted and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction-winning 'Netherland'. In 2007, a New York attorney bumps into an old college buddy - and accepts his friend's offer of a job in Dubai, as the overseer of an enormous family fortune. Haunted by the collapse of his relationship and hoping for a fresh start, our strange hero begins to suspect that he has exchanged one inferno for another. A funny and wholly original work of international literature, 'The Dog' is led by a brilliantly entertaining anti-hero. Imprisoned by his endless powers of reasoning, hemmed in by the ethical demands of globalized life, he is fatefully drawn towards the only logical response to our confounding epoch.
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Joseph O'neill Press Reviews
'Praise for 'Netherland': 'An exquisitely written novel, a large fictional achievement, and one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read.'
James Wood, New Yorker
'[I have] not read anything that quite so brilliantly captured the exuberant madness and cultural diversity of [New York].'
Jeremy Paxman, Guardian (Books of the Year)
'There is a very special sort of gratitude you can feel for a book that is so formidably written that it has you anxious to get back to it and pining a little bit to be away from it.'
Sebastian Barry, Guardian (Books of the Year)
'Dazzling ... and told with great grace and daring.'
Kate Summerscale, Sunday Telegraph (Books of the Year)
'The post-9/11 novel we've been waiting for: a witty, vivid, aphoristic, fiercely intelligent narrative.'
Philip French, Observer (Books of the Year)
'Too good for the Booker.'
Robert McCrum, Observer (Books of the Year)
'Netherland is so expertly woven that it is impossible for a reader not to admire what it essentially is a beautifully written exploration of memory and self.'
Sunday Telegraph
'The wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Centre fell. I devoured it in three thirsty gulps, gulps that satisfied a craving I didn't know I had. O'Neill seems incapable of composing a boring sentence or thinking an uninteresting thought.'
New York Times
'Extraordinary. O'Neill is a writer of dizzying elegance.'
FT
'O'Neill's novel was nominated by critics as a book of the year more times than any other title in 2008, and it's not hard to see why. Its perceptiveness and lingering air of sadness will beguile you more powerfully than you may at first expect.'
Sunday Times
About Joseph O'neill
Joseph O’Neill is an Irish barrister living in New York. He is the author of three previous novels, Netherland (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008), This Is the Life and The Breezes, as well as a memoir, Blood Dark Track.
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