Wynn Wheldon

Kafka goes to Dubai

A review of The Dog, by Joseph O’Neill. This riff on Kafka’s The Castle is dominated by a creep but we stay with it because the satire is absurdly funny

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issue 30 August 2014

‘X’ is in ‘the Situation’: Joseph O’Neill, author of the clever and superb Netherland, hereby lets us know that his new novel is a riff on Kafka’s The Castle. Kafka’s ‘K’ has become X, struggling for recognition by his lover, by his employer, by the world.

The Situation is a residential block in Dubai (desert sand for Kafka’s snow). X is a corporate lawyer who has been invited there by an old college friend, a dodgy Lebanese billionaire, to handle the family’s personal financial affairs. The burdens of this job constitute the first of the three threads that bind the novel together.

The second is the story of X’s relationship and break up with his high-powered girlfriend, Jenn, of whom he is terrified. She is one of the reasons he has fled New York.

The third is the matter of Ted Wilson, a legendary diver, who has gone missing.

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