The Dog: A Novel

The Dog: A Novel

<p><b>***A <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> NOTABLE BOOK***<br />***LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014***<br />***<i>PW</i>s Best of the Year 2014***<br /></b><br />The author of the best-selling and award-winning <i>Netherland</i> now gives us his eagerly awaited, stunningly different new novel: a tale of alienation and heartbreak in Dubai.<br /> <br />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 e-mail, or scuba diving. A comic and philosophically profound exploration of what has become of humankind’s moral progress, <i>The Dog</i> 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.</p>