Richard Wright, Orvil E. Dryfoos Chair of Public Affairs, and Professor of Geography
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On the surface, Netherland concerns 9/11, a marriage going off the rails, and lessons to be learned from cricket. But O’Neill is really more interested in deeper issues: identity, anxiety, and the uncertain promises of immigrant America. He manages to do all this in an extraordinary manner—by exploring the intertwined and entrepreneurial lives of Chuck Ramkissoon, a cricket-playing, street-wise immigrant dreamer and Hans van den Broek, a Dutch-born apolitical equities analyst. The plot is sophisticated and the writing refined; readers will pause on almost every page to savor the prose.