Advertisement

Author Joseph O'Neill On His New Novel 'The Dog'

47:13
Download Audio
Resume

Author of “Netherland,” novelist Joseph O’Neill is back, with “The Dog,” on globalization, capitalism, and self-discovery  in Dubai.

Joseph O'Neill (courtesy of the author)
Joseph O'Neill (courtesy of the author)

Novelist Joseph O’Neill wrote the book the critics loved on New York after 9/11.  Called it "Netherland."  Now he’s writing about the world in and after the financial crash.  And he’s set it in Dubai.  The sleek, magical mystery city of wild towers and wild money between the desert and the Persian Gulf.  The Abracadabrapolis, he calls it.  Where an American expat navigates a physical and moral world hurtling toward empty fantasy.  There are billions and Bentleys, Russian girls and rueful longing for the real.  This hour, On Point:  Kafka on the Persian Gulf in “The Dog,” with novelist Joseph O’Neill.
- Tom Ashbrook

Guest

Joseph O'Neill, Irish novelist and non-fiction writer. Author of "Netherland." His new novel, "The Dog," was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

From Tom's Reading List

The Guardian: Joseph O'Neill: 'It's not my fault if every time I sit down to write, something big happens!' - "Dubai is a kind of California. It's the future for the so-called sophisticated west. We're all headed to Dubai, not just culturally but on matters such as labour organisation and the hollowing-out of the nation state."

The Daily Beast: Joseph O'Neill's 'The Dog' Has a Dystopian Dubai as Modernity's Stand-In - "Joseph O’Neill’s compelling new novel, 'The Dog,' is concerned with capturing this fragmented, stateless, and alienated society. The world we enter here is one of promised luxury: velvet ropes, fancy hotels, postmodern architecture, air-conditioned apartments, segregated communities, and a spiral of building projects that seem to continue on into the desert forever."

Slate: The Abracadabrapolis - "'The Dog,' Joseph O’Neill’s bleak and funny new novel, is many things: a confession, a businessman’s handbook to Dubai, a cautionary tale of exile."

Excerpt: "The Dog" by Joseph O'Neill

Excerpted from "The Dog" by Joseph O'Neill. Copyright © 2014 by Joseph O'Neill. Excerpted by permission of Pantheon, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

This program aired on September 19, 2014.

Advertisement

More from On Point

Listen Live
Close