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There’s a before and an after to Paul Yoon’s writing life, and at the center is Oscar — a floppy, gentle, food-loving, 70-pound yellow Lab.

Yoon didn’t grow up with dogs, so it was really his wife — fellow writer Laura van den Berg — who insisted on the addition. She might have known what would happen to their buttoned-up writing life when a puppy entered it. Paul didn’t.

But he quickly fell in love with this disruptive and magical creature. It gave him a new way of looking at the world. His sixth novel is the result of that transformation. 

” is about a combat dog searching for home after war ravages his unnamed country — and the whole story is told from the dog’s point of view. 

It’s something Yoon wouldn’t have attempted outside of Oscar. 

“Part of it was imagining what Oscar might sound like,” Yoon tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. ”I imagine him to be a dignified and empathetic creature. To me, he’s the best — so it was trying to capture what I thought were his best qualities and bring that onto the page.”

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Paul Yoon didn’t know it on the day he and his wife adopted Oscar, a yellow lab puppy, that his world would never be the same. His new novel, “Etna,” grew out of his love affair with his dog.  

A book cover and a photo of a man and a dog

Paul Yoon's novel 'Etna' is told from a dog's point of view, thanks to Oscar

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