Joseph O'Neill

Immediately upon its 2008 publication, Netherland received extraordinary critical acclaim. Michiko Kakutani in a New York Times review wrote, ''With echoes of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's masterpiece, Joseph O'Neill's stunning new novel, Netherland, provides a resonant meditation on the American Dream.'' In the New Yorker, James Wood claimed this novel is ''one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read . . . Netherland has a deep human wisdom.'' And President Barack Obama, in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, revealed that he was reading Netherland to escape the tedium of briefing books.

Netherland resonates with readers on an intellectual and emotional level. In New York City after 9/11, an especially vulnerable time, two immigrants, a Dutch banker and a Trinidadian small business owner, bond over their shared loneliness, being outsiders, and the sport of cricket. The ''voice'' of the novel, with its rueful reckoning of the complexities and allure of a changing world, captures the atmosphere and tone of our time. Netherland won the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was one of the New York Times Top Ten Books of 2008.

Joseph O'Neill is also the author of two previous novels, This Is the Life and The Breezes. He also wrote Blood-Dark Track, a memoir about his grandfathers who were both imprisoned during World War II, which was a New York Times Notable Book.

Joseph O'Neill, who for years was a barrister in London, is a witty and natural speaker; he has made public appearances across the U.S. and in his native Europe.

Works by this Speaker

Netherland

New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year 

In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.

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Blood-Dark Track

From the bestselling and PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Netherland, a fascinating, personal, and beautifully crafted family history.

Joseph O'Neill's grandfathers--one Turkish, one Irish--were both imprisoned for suspected subversion during the Second World War. The Irish grandfather, a handsome rogue from a family of small farmers, was an active member of the IRA. O'Neill's other grandfather, a debonair hotelier from the tiny and threatened Turkish Christian minority, was interned by the British in Palestine on suspicion of being an Axis spy.

With intellect, compassion, and grace, O'Neill sets the stories of these individuals against the history of the last century's most inhuman events.

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