The Dog

Summary

A New York Times notable book. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014. PW's best of the year 2014. The author of the best-selling and award-winning Netherland now gives us his eagerly awaited, stunningly different new novel: a tale of alienation and heartbreak in Dubai.  Distraught by a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, our unnamed hero leaves New York to take an unusual job in a strange desert metropolis. In Dubai at the height of its self-invention as a futuristic Shangri-la, he struggles with his new position as the "family officer" of the capricious and very rich Batros family. And he struggles, even more helplessly, with the "doghouse", a seemingly inescapable condition of culpability in which he feels himself constantly trapped - even if he’s just going to the bathroom, or reading email, or scuba diving.  A comic and philosophically profound exploration of what has become of humankind’s moral progress, The Dog is told with Joseph O’Neill’s hallmark eloquence, empathy, and storytelling mastery. It is a brilliantly original, achingly funny fable for our globalized times.

©2014 Joseph O'Neill (P)2014 Random House Audio