The Dog
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- 6,99 €
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- 6,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION
The first novel from Joseph O’Neill since NETHERLAND.
‘O’Neill, in this book, has come of age as a novelist … a comic masterpiece … as mordantly funny as the best of stand-up comedy … Superb’ John Banville, New York Review of Books
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.
Reviews
‘I’m in love with this book … It’s superbly written and very very funny and also very true’ David Aaronovitch
‘On page after page, O'Neill can still dazzle as a compellingly intelligent writer. Everywhere you look, there's a shimmering portrait of modernity waiting to be glimpsed … [An] ambitious, lucidly thought-through novel’ Guardian
‘Our only truly international writer … Breathtaking … O'Neill's writing reflects the individual's concerns in our desolate modern world in prose that is illuminating, amusing, sometimes beautiful, but never showy … A joy to read … Supremely insightful and intelligent … You can open the book anywhere and find sparkling sentences that perfectly describe what is momentarily in focus … Original and brilliant’ Irish Independent
‘O’Neill has become a writer extraordinarily attuned to the global and the post-national … Like “Netherland”, THE DOG has captured the zeitgeist … This is where O’Neill feels at home: telling the stories of those who cease to belong’ Telegraph
‘Sharp, sad and sometimes hilarious, this is a fable for our times’ Daily Mail
‘A mercilessly absurd portrait of the city’s wealthy residents … Our narrator is like Woody Allen trapped inside a Kafka novel … Brilliant … One of the wittiest critiques of modern, materialistic life that you’ll read for a long while’ The Times
‘The best comic novel I’ve read for ages’ The Scotsman
‘Enraged, brutal, witty and at times brilliant’ Sunday Times
‘Erudite and deliciously comic … like a mix of Martin Amis and Thomas Bernhard …With consummate elegance, THE DOG turns in on itself in imitation of the dreadful circling and futility of consciousness itself … Its wit and brio keeps us more temporarily alive than we usually allow ourselves to be’ New York Times Book Review
‘A mordantly funny and, surprisingly for these times, deeply moral tale of lost love and economic betrayal’ John Banville, Observer, Books of the Year
About the author
Joseph O’Neill is the author of three previous novels, ‘This is the Life’, ‘The Breezes’ and Man Booker-longlisted ‘Netherland’, as well as a memoir, ‘Blood-Dark Track’. He lives in New York.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As he did brilliantly in Netherland, O'Neill, in his latest, creates a character who is alienated from his home and social class, and who feels dangerously vulnerable in a country in which he lives a luxurious but precarious existence. The unnamed narrator (we do learn that his given name begins with X) fled from his position in a Manhattan law firm after a bad breakup with a colleague. Feeling lucky at first to get a job in Dubai as "family officer" of the wealthy Batros family, the narrator discovers that he must ignore his ethical principles in order to do the blatantly illegal work required of him. Everyone encountered by the narrator is corrupt, except for his assistant, Ali, who is a bidoon a stateless person lacking basic human rights. O'Neill's Dubai is "a vast booby trap of medieval judicial perils," and the narrator gets caught in "one fucking glitch after another." Gradually, the sordidness of his situation wears down the his psychological defenses. His agitated thoughts, which the author conveys in pitch-perfect prose, become more and more muddled; his asides within asides (indicated by multiple parentheses) veer into philosophical ramblings and recurrent mea culpas, as he accuses himself of "chronic self-misrepresentation and inner absenteeism." The narrator develops an obsession with the disappearance of another American man, even while his own life cascades toward a dead end. Clever, witty, and profoundly insightful, this is a beautifully crafted narrative about a man undone by a soulless society.
