Godwin

Ein mitreißender Roman über unsere globalisierte Welt - am Beispiel der milliardenschweren Fußballindustrie Mark Wolfe ist im Job gerade wegen 'Überarbeitung' in den Urlaub geschickt worden, als sein Bruder, ein windiger Geschäftemacher, ihn um Hilfe bittet. Er hat ein Video zugespielt bekommen: ein Ballplatz. Rote Erde. Ein Junge, der Fußball spielt wie ein Gott. Die Welt des Fußballs, sagt Geoff, ist gefährlich, aber dieser Junge ist Millionen wert. Man muss ihn nur finden. Bald schon steigt Geoff frustriert aus dem Geschäft aus. Doch Mark findet heraus, dass das Video aus Benin stammt. Und er beschließt, mit einem halbseidenen Franzosen, der den Markt der Jungtalente aus Afrika kennt, sich auf die Suche nach dem Jungen zu machen. Als der Franzose ihn übers Ohr haut und alleine fliegt, kehrt Mark zurück in den Job, wo es auch Drama genug gibt. Doch eines Abends steht der Franzose vor seiner Tür. Er hat den Jungen gefunden. Er war nicht der Erste. Und er erzählt Mark eine ungeheuerliche Geschichte.'O'Neill ist ein kosmopolitischer, kenntnisreicher Berichterstatter aus den Untiefen unserer Gegenwart.' Süddeutsche Zeitung

'A fantastic novel, brilliantly crafted' MARCUS DU SAUTOY'Enthralling ... not to be missed'GUARDIAN'A meticulously constructed marvel' WASHINGTON POST'I wish there were more books like this'ELIF BATUMANThe return of Joseph O'Neill, with a story on the scale of the international phenomenon Netherland: the odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African football prodigy who might change their fortunes.Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the UK, is a desperate young football agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as "Godwin" - an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Messi.Narrated in turn by Mark and his work colleague Lakesha Williams, the novel is both a tale of family and migration, and an international adventure story that implicates the brothers in the beauty and ugliness of football, the perils and promises of international business, and the dark history of transatlantic money-making.As only he can do, Joseph O'Neill investigates the legacy of colonialism in the context of family love, global capitalism, and the dreaming individual.'Among the best novels I've read in a long time' BILL BUFORD'Delightful, funny ... rapidly told in masterful prose'FINANCIAL TIMES'Moving ... enjoyable'THE TIMES'This has all the velocity and swerve of an unstoppable free kick'PUBLISHERS WEEKLYJoseph O'Neill's novel Netherland was longlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize

In early 2006, Chuck Ramkissoon is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal.In London, a Dutch banker named Hans van den Broek hears the news, and remembers his unlikely friendship with Chuck and the off-kilter New York in which it flourished: the New York of 9/11, the powercut and the Iraq war. Those years were difficult for Hans - his English wife Rachel left with their son after the attack, as if that event revealed the cracks and silences in their marriage, and he spent two strange years in New York's Chelsea Hotel, passing stranger evenings with the eccentric residents.Lost in a country he'd regarded as his new home, Hans sought comfort in a most alien place - the thriving but almost invisible world of New York cricket, in which immigrants from Asia and the West Indies play a beautiful, mystifying game on the city's most marginal parks. It was during these games that Hans befriends Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreamed of establishing the city's first proper cricket field. Over the course of a summer, Hans grew to share Chuck's dream and Chuck's sense of American possibility - until he began to glimpse the darker meaning of his new friend's activities and ambitions.'Netherland' is a novel of belonging and not belonging, and the uneasy state in between. It is a novel of a marriage foundering and recuperating, and of the shallows and depths of male friendship. With it, Joseph O'Neill has taken the anxieties and uncertainties of our new century and fashioned a work of extraordinary beauty and brilliance.

'A fantastic novel, brilliantly crafted' MARCUS DU SAUTOY'Enthralling ... not to be missed'GUARDIAN'A meticulously constructed marvel' WASHINGTON POST'I wish there were more books like this'ELIF BATUMANThe return of Joseph O'Neill, with a story on the scale of the international phenomenon Netherland: the odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African football prodigy who might change their fortunes.Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the UK, is a desperate young football agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as "Godwin" - an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Messi.Narrated in turn by Mark and his work colleague Lakesha Williams, the novel is both a tale of family and migration, and an international adventure story that implicates the brothers in the beauty and ugliness of football, the perils and promises of international business, and the dark history of transatlantic money-making.As only he can do, Joseph O'Neill investigates the legacy of colonialism in the context of family love, global capitalism, and the dreaming individual.'Among the best novels I've read in a long time' BILL BUFORD'Delightful, funny ... rapidly told in masterful prose'FINANCIAL TIMES'Moving ... enjoyable'THE TIMES'This has all the velocity and swerve of an unstoppable free kick'PUBLISHERS WEEKLYJoseph O'Neill's novel Netherland was longlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize