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Joseph O'Neill (writer, born 1964)

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Joseph O'Neill
O'Neill at the 2010 Texas Book Festival
O'Neill at the 2010 Texas Book Festival
Born (1964-02-23) 23 February 1964 (age 60)
Cork, Ireland
Occupationlawyer, fiction writer, cultural critic
Period1991–present
Notable worksNetherland

Joseph O'Neill is an Irish novelist and non-fiction writer. O'Neill's novel Netherland was awarded the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction[1] and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.[2]

Early life

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Joseph O'Neill was born in Cork, Ireland, on 23 February 1964.[3][4] He is of half-Irish and half-Turkish ancestry.[5]

O'Neill's parents moved around much in O'Neill's youth: O'Neill spent time in Mozambique as a toddler and in Turkey until the age of four, and he also lived in Iran.[4] From the age of six, O'Neill lived in the Netherlands, where he attended the Lycée français de La Haye and the British School in the Netherlands. He read law at Girton College, Cambridge, preferring it over English because "literature was too precious" and he wanted it to remain a hobby. O'Neill started off his literary career in poetry but had turned away from it by the age of 24.[4] After being called to the English Bar in 1987, he spent a year writing his first novel. O'Neill then entered full-time practice as a barrister in London, principally in the field of business law.[6] Since 1998 he has lived in New York City.[citation needed]

Career

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Writing

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O'Neill is the author of five novels. He is best known for Netherland, which was published in May 2008 and was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where it was called "the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell".[7] It was included in The New York Times list of the 10 Best Books of 2008.[8] Literary critic James Wood called it "one of the most remarkable postcolonial books I have ever read". In an interview with the BBC in June 2009, US President Barack Obama revealed that he was reading it, describing it as "an excellent novel."[9]

Among the books on the longlist, it was the favourite to win the Man Booker Prize.[10] However, on 9 September 2008, the Booker nominee shortlist was announced, and the novel failed to make the list.[11] The book received the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction[12] and the 2009 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.[13] It was shortlisted for the Impac Prize, then the world's richest literary award.[14]

His next novel, The Dog (2014), was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction,[15] named a Notable Book of 2014 by The New York Times,[16] and shortlisted for the Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.[17] His most recent novel, Godwin, was published in June 2024.

O'Neill is also the author of a collection of short stories, Good Trouble (2018), most of which first appeared in the New Yorker or Harper's magazine. Two of his stories have been awarded an O. Henry prize.[18][19] Others have been anthologized in:

  • New Irish Short Stories (ed. Joseph O'Connor) (Faber & Faber) (2011)
  • Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories (ed. David Marcus) (Faber & Faber) (2007)
  • Dislocation: Stories from a New Ireland (ed. Caroline Walsh) (Carroll & Graf) (2003)
  • Phoenix Irish Short Stories (ed. David Marcus) (Phoenix) (1999)

O'Neill has also written a non-fiction book, Blood-Dark Track: A Family History, which was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a Book of the Year for the Economist and the Irish Times.

In 2019, O'Neill began to publish political essays in the New York Review of Books.[20] He has also written literary and cultural criticism, notably for The Atlantic Monthly.

Teaching

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He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts at Bard College.[21]

Personal life

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O'Neill speaks English, French and Dutch.[4] He played club cricket in the Netherlands and the UK, and has played for many years at the Staten Island Cricket Club, much like his Netherland protagonist Hans.[22] His love of cricket continues and he is an active player (as of 2015).[23] In an interview with The Paris Review in 2014 O'Neill said, explaining his interest in writing about Dubai in The Dog, "I’ve moved around so much and lived in so many different places that I don’t really belong to a particular place."[24]

Bibliography

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Novels

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  • Godwin (Pantheon; Fourth Estate) (2024)
  • The Dog (Pantheon; Fourth Estate) (2014)
  • Netherland (Pantheon; Fourth Estate) (2008)
  • The Breezes (Faber & Faber) (1996)
  • This Is the Life (Faber & Faber; Farrar Straus & Giroux) (1991)

Short fiction

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Collections
  • Good Trouble (2018)[25]
Selected Stories
  • "The Time Being" The New Yorker, March 11, 2024[26]
  • "Rainbows" The New Yorker, September 28, 2020[27]
  • "The Flier" The New Yorker, November 4, 2019 [28]
  • "The First World" The New Yorker, June 25, 2018[29]
  • "The Poltroon Husband" The New Yorker, March 5, 2018[30]
  • "The Sinking of the Houston" The New Yorker, October 23, 2017[31]
  • "The Mustache in 2010" Harper's, June 30, 2017[32]
  • "Pardon Edward Snowden" The New Yorker, December 12, 2016[33]
  • "The Trusted Traveler" Harper's, May 20, 2016[34]
  • "The Referees". The New Yorker. 1 September 2014.
  • "The World of Cheese". Harper's. Vol. 318, no. 1905. February 2009. pp. 61–68.

Non-fiction

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  • Blood-Dark Track: A Family History (Granta Books) (2001)
Introductory Essays
  • The Blue Mask by Joel Lane (Influx Press) (2023)
  • Amsterdam Stories by Nescio, tr. Damion Searles (New York Review of Books Classics) (2012)
  • The Actual: A Novella by Saul Bellow (Penguin Classics) (2009)
Selected Personal Writing
  • "Good Day Sunshine" In Their Lives: Great Writers on Great Beatles Songs (by Andrew Blauner, Ed.) (Prentice Hall Press) (2017)
  • "Memories of Trump's Wedding" The New Yorker online, August 1, 2016[35]
  • "A Sartorial Personal History" Esquire: The Big Black Book #3 Spring 2014
  • "What's Wrong With Me?" The Dublin Review 50, Spring 2013
  • "Losed" Granta 111, July 2010
  • "The Relevance of Cosmopolitanism" The Atlantic, Fiction Issue 2009[36]
  • "Why Updike Matters" Granta online, January 29, 2009[37]
  • "Portrait of My Father" Granta online, November 20, 2008

Selected Critical Writings

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  • "Population: 1" Poetry Ireland Review 116: A WB Yeats Special Issue (2015)
  • "Roth v Roth v Roth" (on Philip Roth) The Atlantic February 27, 2012
  • "Man Without a Country" (on V.S. Naipaul) The Atlantic July 24, 2011
  • "Killing Her Softly" (on Muriel Spark) The Atlantic August 11, 2010
  • "Touched by Evil" (on Flannery O'Connor) The Atlantic June 1, 2009
  • "The Last Laugh" (on Flann O'Brien) The Atlantic May 1, 2008
  • "Bowling Alone" (on C.L.R. James) The Atlantic October 1, 2007
  • "New Fiction" (on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro) The Atlantic May 2005

References

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  1. ^ PEN/Faulkner Award Goes to Joseph O'Neill, The Washington Post, 26 February 2009
  2. ^ "'Netherland' by Joseph O'Neill wins €15,000 Kerry Group fiction prize". The Irish Times.
  3. ^ Joseph O'Neill, Blood-Dark Track: A Family History (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010) p15
  4. ^ a b c d Mark Sarvas (July 2009). "The Elegant Variation – The Joseph O'Neill Interview". The Elegant Variation. Retrieved 7 February 2013.
  5. ^ "Joseph O'Neill, The New Immigrant Experience". NPR. 26 November 2008.
  6. ^ "Interview with Joseph O'Neill – Part 3", The Elegant Variation, 15 July 2009.
  7. ^ Garner, Dwight (18 May 2008). "The Ashes". The New York Times.
  8. ^ "The 10 Best Books of 2008". The New York Times. 3 December 2008. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
  9. ^ Webb, Justin (2 June 2009). "Obama Interview: the transcript". BBC.
  10. ^ Anthony, Andrew (7 September 2008). "Perfect delivery". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
  11. ^ Bosman, Julie (9 September 2008). "Booker Prize Shortlist Is Announced". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
  12. ^ "Past Winners & Finalists | PEN / Faulkner Foundation". Archived from the original on 21 December 2013. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  13. ^ "Joseph O'Neill's Netherland wins Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award 2009. - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  14. ^ Lea, Richard (12 April 2010). "Impac shortlist led by Joseph O'Neill and Marilynne Robinson". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  15. ^ "Man Booker Prize longlists Dubai-based The Dog by Joseph O'Neill". The National. UAE. 24 July 2014. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
  16. ^ "100 Notable Books of 2014", The New York Times, 2 December 2014.
  17. ^ Deans, Jason (30 March 2015). "Wodehouse pri ze for comic fiction 2015 shortlist announced". The Guardian.
  18. ^ "The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017: 9780525432500 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  19. ^ "Announcing the Winners of the 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction". Literary Hub. 4 April 2022. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  20. ^ "Joseph O'Neill". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  21. ^ "Bard Division of Languages and Literature Events Faculty at Bard College".
  22. ^ Leonard, Tom (9 February 2009). "Joseph O'Neill: 'I wasn't disappointed'". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
  23. ^ "The Essentials. Go, Ireland". The Cricket Monthly ESPN Cricinfo. June 2015.
  24. ^ Lee, Jonathan (3 October 2014). "Nothing Happened: An Interview with Joseph O'Neill". Paris Review Daily. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
  25. ^ "Fourth Estate signs O'Neill's contemporary political stories". The Bookseller. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  26. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (11 March 2024). ""The Time Being," by Joseph O'Neill". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  27. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (28 September 2020). ""Rainbows"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  28. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (4 November 2019). ""The Flier"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  29. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (25 June 2018). ""The First World"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  30. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (5 March 2018). ""The Poltroon Husband"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  31. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (23 October 2017). ""The Sinking of the Houston"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  32. ^ https://harpers.org/archive/2017/07/the-mustache-in-2010/
  33. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (4 December 2016). ""Pardon Edward Snowden"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  34. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (February 2016). "The Trusted Traveler". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  35. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (1 August 2016). "Memories of Trump's Wedding". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  36. ^ O’Neill, Joseph (1 August 2009). "The Relevance of Cosmopolitanism". The Atlantic. ISSN 2151-9463. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
  37. ^ "Why Updike Matters". Granta. 29 January 2009. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
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