Globe Corner Blogs

Netherland - by Joseph O'Neill

So, apparently President Obama is reading Netherland. This is great news for Joseph O’Neill, the novel’s author.

Netherland, just out in paperback, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and, much to my surprise, cut from the short list.  It was also one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2008.

When I told a friend I was reading Netherland, he responded by asking if it was a book set “back in the day.” It’s not, but it was a fair question. The title is enigmatic and elusive: Netherland refers to the protagonist’s birth country (the Netherlands) and to the primary setting of the novel, New York City, once called New Amsterdam (“back in the day” of course). And going further, the title, read as nether-land, evokes images of some sort of underworld, a hidden realm that exists below the surface of the what’s most apparently visible, a nether world I understand to be the psyche of New Yorkers living in a post 9/11 world and struggling to make sense of life in a city that is often too immense, too overwhelming. Continue Reading »

The White Tiger --by Aravind Adiga

*On October 14th, Aravind Adiga was announced the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2008 for his novel, The White Tiger. To further laud Mr. Adiga and his book, Jess tells us just why exactly this book deserves such praise.*

In honor of coworker Nicole’s departure to Bangalore (and because I can’t go there myself), I’m recommending a recent stand-out novel in the ever-widening body of literature that discusses the post-colonial experience in modernizing countries such as India: Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger.

Written as a modern epistolary novel, the story of the protagonist, Balram Halwai, is dictated over the course of seven nights. The reader learns early on that Balram has not only risen out from the great “Rooster Coop” of India to become a successful entrepreneur, but has also committed the greatest crime of all: murder. First-time author Aravind Adiga consistently uses dark and light imagery to trace Balram’s rise to (relative) economic success and his transition to the modern center of India, Delhi. But as Balram emerges from the dark heart of India, he is also faced with a new type of darkness — a moral darkness that will either destroy or save him.

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