Netherland (edit title)

Jisha M edited the awards of Netherland 8 days ago.

• Added an award: Man Booker Prize
• Added year of an award: Man Booker Prize 2008

Timothy Gray approved AndrewTheLott’s request to change the title of Netherland Saturday, September 26 2009.

AndrewTheLott changed the title of Netherland Friday, September 25 2009.

Shelfari edited the description of Netherland Friday, July 31 2009.

• In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans 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. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an “other” New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. Hans is alternately seduced and instructed by Chuck’s particular brand of naivete and chutzpah--by his ability to a hold fast to a sense of American and human possibility in which Hans has come to lose faith. Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider’s vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man--of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O’Neill’s prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life.

eissme edited the first sentence of Netherland Wednesday, July 22 2009.

• The afternoon before I left London for New York - Rachel had flown out six weeks previously - I was in my cubicle at work, boxing up my possessions, when a senior vice-president at the bank, and Englishman in his fifties, came to wish me well.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Netherland Tuesday, July 21 2009.

• reordered the contributors.
• 1 : Joseph O'Neill:

Shelfari edited the contributors of Netherland Thursday, July 16 2009.

• Added a contributor: Joseph O'Neill: (Primary Author)

Peiyu W edited the quotations of Netherland Sunday, July 12 2009.

• Added a quotation: “Instead of answering the point, you sabotage the discussion”