The dog

Following a relationship break-up, the central protagonist, an unnamed New York attorney, leaves to take up a job working thanklessly for a mega-rich family in Dubai.

The story has several strands and characters, none of whom the reader particularly warms to or becomes engaged with.

But that seems the point in this postmodernist existentialist novel, long-listed for the Booker, which ultimately seems a comment on the superficiality and soullessness of existence in a world - perfectly exemplified in Dubai - of rapid growth, greed, consumerism and alienation.

Thought-provoking if not strictly ''easy'' reading, it also contains what must be some of the longest sentences in fiction!

-  ODT books editor Helen Speirs