Back to Gideon RachmanI was fascinated to read in Lucy Kellaway’s column today that Barack Obama is reading “Netherland” - most of my friends and family seem to be reading it as well. I wonder what it is that makes a novel suddenly go “viral” in this way. It is not as if Joseph O’Neill’s book has recieved massive Harry Potter-like coverage. It missed out on the major book awards - it didn’t make the Booker shortlist in Britain. Nor is its subject matter obviously compelling: a Dutch man going through a marital crisis in post 9-11 New York discovers cricket.
Still - obviously sub-consciously influenced by the cultural climate - I picked up a copy of “Netherland” in Waterstones a couple of months ago. I was enjoying it and about half-way through after a flight, when my wife stole it. Since then, it has been sitting on the wrong bedside table and I have got distracted and failed to finish it. But in the intervening weeks - my oldest friend and my mother have both told me how good it is. My wife has read it; my colleagues are mentioning it in columns. And now even the American president is reading it, so perhaps I better reclaim the book and get to the end.
A couple of the women I have discussed “Netherland” with claim it is a “boy’s book” - too much about cricket and his mother apparently, as well as boring bits where O’Neill strays from the narrative to describe the scenery or a passer-by.
The fact that it should appeal to Obama does - I think - make an interesting contrast with President George W. Bush. Bush was also a great reader, believe it or not, but his tastes tended towards the lives of great men; biographies of Churchill and Lincoln, for example. For a while it looked like Obama was pursuing the same sort of “useful books for a president” strategy - hence his well-advertised interest in Doris Kearn Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals”. But “Netherland” - melancholy, descriptive and inward-looking - reveals a different side of the president. Perhaps he is still the same man who wrote the melancholy and inward-looking “Dreams From My Father”
This blog covers a variety of topics from US foreign policy to European politics and the Middle East - and whatever else happens to be in the news or catch my attention. I joined the FT as chief foreign affairs commentator in 2006, after a 15-year career at The Economist which included stints as a correspondent in Brussels, Bangkok and Washington. I write a weekly column on foreign affairs, which appears in the paper on Tuesdays. Occasionally my FT colleagues contribute posts to this blog.
Geoff Dyer is the FT's China bureau chief. He has been a correspondent in Shanghai and in Brazil and has also covered the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries from London.
Roula Khalaf is the FT's Middle East editor. She has worked for the FT since 1995, first as North Africa correspondent, then Middle East correspondent and most recently as Middle East editor. Before joining the FT, she was a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York. 
James Blitz is the FT's defence and diplomatic editor. He has been the FT's political editor, based in London, and Rome bureau chief. James is a former Moscow bureau chief for the Sunday Times.
Alan Beattie is the FT's world trade editor. He has previously been economics leader writer and spent two years in Washington DC as chief US economics correspondent. Before joining the FT, Alan was an economist at the Bank of England. 
Victor Mallet is the FT's Madrid correspondent. He is a former Asia editor of the FT, and, in more than 20 years at the organisation, has also worked in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. In 1990 he escaped from Kuwait after being one of the few foreign correspondents there when Iraq invaded. 
Stefan Wagstyl is the FT's eastern Europe editor, co-ordinating coverage of the region. He has also been the FT's bureau chief in Tokyo and New Delhi.