Joseph O'Neill
Joseph O'Neill (born February 23, 1964 in Cork , Ireland ) is an Irish writer. In 2009 he received the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and the PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction for his novel Netherlands .
The grandfathers
O'Neill is half Irish , half Turkish . Both grandfathers were captured under strange circumstances during World War II , the subject of his only non-fiction book to date, Blood-Dark Track . The Turkish maternal grandfather, Joseph Dakad, was imprisoned in Palestine on charges of spying for the Germans. His paternal Irish grandfather, James O'Neill, was interned as a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). O'Neill's parents were not very communicative when it came to the life stories of the two grandfathers, which piqued his interest.
Joseph Dakad, a Syrian Christian, owned a hotel in Mersin on the Turkish Mediterranean coast. In January 1942, a frost destroyed the local citrus harvest and Dakad sensed a deal if he managed to import lemons from Palestine. Despite having a visa, he was detained at the Syrian border by British officials on the way back and jailed for three and a half years for espionage. Whether Dakad actually spied - he was in close contact with Franz von Papen , at that time the German ambassador to Turkey - or was merely naive remains to be seen in the end.
The other grandfather, James O'Neill, had witnessed the Irish War of Independence 1918-21 as a boy and trained fighters for the IRA in the 1930s until he was interned for five years in the infamous Curragh camp , County Kildare . In his book, O'Neill investigates the suspicion that this grandfather was involved in the murder of Vice Admiral Henry Somerville , which began the rise of the IRA in 1936 and began long years of terror. At the end of his research it turns out that the killer was actually a great-uncle of his. As much as he values both grandfathers, he tries to understand what they did, but not to apologize.
The New York Times took Blood-Dark Track in 2002 remarkable in their list books; The Economist and Irish Times named it Book of the Year.
Life
Joseph O'Neill's father met his wife in Turkey when he was building a small oil refinery in Mersin. The son was born after the day of the death of his grandfather Joseph Dakad, which is why he was named after him. After stays in South Africa, Mozambique, Syria, Turkey and Iran, Joseph O'Neill grew up in the Netherlands from 1970 on. He attended the French Lycée and the British School in The Hague , while his father spent most of his time on plant engineering projects abroad. “For those of us [students] who came from two non-British countries, things were three times unclear, or rather four times when, like me and my siblings, you spoke Dutch and spent many years with Dutch friends; and finally five times the complexity if, in addition to the complexities mentioned, one spoke French at home. "
Joseph O'Neill studied law at Girton College , Cambridge and not English because "literature was too precious" for him and he wanted to keep it as a hobby. He wrote his thesis on the subject of whether the IRA was authorized to kill. It wasn't until much later that his father confessed that he had been a member of the IRA himself. After taking a year off to write his first novel, Joseph O'Neill became a barrister , a lawyer admitted to the bar, and practiced commercial law in London at the Temple for ten years .
O'Neill has lived in New York since 1998. He is married to Vogue editor Sally Singer, who turned down his second novel when she was an editor at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux . The two live with their three sons in the Hotel Chelsea in New York . O'Neill has an Irish and a US passport. In addition to books, he writes literary and cultural criticism, most regularly for The Atlantic .
Novels
O'Neill is the author of four novels, the third of which, Netherland , was published in 2008 and made him famous. It was heralded on the cover of the New York Times Book Review as "the most ingenious, furious, demanding, and desolate fiction to date about life in New York and London after the fall of the World Trade Center ." It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the New York Times ' list of the Ten Best Books of 2008.
The main character of the Netherlands is the banking analyst Hans van den Broek, who lives in New York. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, his marriage got into a crisis that was not made easier by the fact that his wife justified it with the political circumstances under President George W. Bush . She moves to London with their son, while van den Broek stays in New York and only visits the family every two weeks. On the other weekends, he rediscovers the game of cricket that he loved in his youth. Cricket is considered an exotic sport in the USA that is only practiced by immigrants from the former Commonwealth of Nations. Van den Broek finds himself in a community of Jamaicans, Indians and Pakistanis, which for him becomes a family substitute, even if the social gap is extremely large. Among other things, he met the referee Chuck Ramkissoon, with whom he became friends. Chuck's big dream is to build a cricket stadium and bring the World Cup to New York. For a long time van den Broek does not want to recognize what the Jamaican makes his living from, until Chuck confronts him with the truth after an argument. The shock finally leads van den Broek - after the analyst has only watched his own life so far - to move to London and tackle the rescue of his marriage.
In The Breezes , O'Neill explores the question of how much misfortune a person can endure before they collapse. The title refers to the Breeze family, whose story is told from the perspective of son John. Fourteen years ago, John's mother, Mary Breeze, died of a lightning strike, and the bereaved family members feel that they have experienced their level of misfortune. In the novel, John Breeze tells in flashbacks of two weeks in which the unhappiness in the lives of him, his father and his sister is piling up. He himself works as a carpenter with artistic ambitions, but does not manage to finish the chairs for his first exhibition. His sister can't get rid of her boyfriend, who just takes advantage of her. Above all, his father keeps the family together with seemingly unshakable optimism until he is quit his job. O'Neill explores the extent to which religious belief supports people who only believe in conventional ways. In the end, however, the Breezes each recognize a perspective for how they can continue their lives.
In 2014 O'Neill released The Dog, which is set in Dubai . From a first-person perspective, the novel tells the story of an American lawyer who, after the ruinous end of a longstanding relationship, is given the chance to work as a "family officer" for the extremely rich and at the same time dubious Batros family for a princely salary. Against this background, the author paints a satirical picture of the emirate and life in the globalized information society from the perspective of his tragic-comic protagonist.
Works
Novels
- This is the life . Faber & Faber; Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1991.
- The Breezes . Faber & Faber, 1996.
- Netherland . Pantheon; Fourth Estate, 2008. (German: Netherlands . Nikolaus Stingl (translator). Rowohlt, Reinbek 2009. ISBN 978-3498050412 )
- The Dog (Pantheon; Fourth Estate) (2014).
Non-fiction
- Blood-Dark Track: A Family History . Granta Books, London 2001.
Short stories
Included in the anthologies:
- David Marcus (Ed.): Phoenix Irish Short Stories . 1999.
- Caroline Walsh (Ed.): Dislocation: Stories from a New Ireland . Carroll & Graf, 2003.
- David Marcus (Ed.): Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories . Faber & Faber, 2007.
Journalistic work
- Archive of his work for The Atlantic
- Part 2 of the work for The Atlantic
- Archive of the work for New York Magazine
- The Ascent of Man ( Granta , issue 72, winter 2000)
Web links
- Literature by and about Joseph O'Neill in the catalog of the German National Library
- "Pen in One Hand, Cricket Bat in the Other," by Charles McGrath, The New York Times , May 17, 2008. Review by The Netherlands .
- "What Did You Do in the War?" , by Colin Harrison, The New York Times , February 17, 2002. Review of Blood-Dark Track .
Individual evidence
- ^ PEN / Faulkner Award Goes to Joseph O'Neill, The Washington Post, February 26, 2009
- ↑ Blood-Dark Track ..., p. 243
- ^ Dwight Garner: The Ashes . In: New York Times . May 18, 2008. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
- ^ The 10 Best Books of 2008 . In: New York Times . December 3, 2008. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
- ↑ Perfect delivery . In: The Guardian . September 7, 2008. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | O'Neill, Joseph |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Irish writer and lawyer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 23, 1964 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cork , Ireland |