Book of the Month–July 2014 |

Open City
By: Teju Cole

Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks meet a need for Julius: they are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. Though he is navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation.

But it is not only a physical landscape he covers; Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey—which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.

A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss, dislocation, and surrender, Teju Cole’s Open City seethes with intelligence. Written in a clear, rhythmic voice that lingers, this book is a mature, profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our country and our world.

Publisher’s Description

Also available as:
eBook
Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Read an excerpt

Acknowledgements and Awards
2012: Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
2012: The Royal Society of Literature Ondatjee Prize (finalist)
2011: National Book Critics Circle Award (finalist)

Book Reviews
The Economist
The Guardian
The New Yorker

About the Author

I’m an American writer. I’m a Nigerian writer. I’m a Nigerian American writer. I’m an African writer. I’m a Yoruba writer. I’m an African American writer. I’m a writer who feels very close to literary practice in India—which I go to quite often—and to writers over there. So bring it on! I don’t want to be called just one thing.

Teju Cole was born in Michigan in 1975 and named Obayemi Babajide Adetokunbo Onafuwa. He spent his childhood in Nigeria, returning to the United States at 17. His first book, Every Day is for the Thief, is a novella based on his own experiences visiting Nigeria after living in the US. It was published in Nigeria in 2007 and in Canada in 2014.

Open City was published 2011.

Teju Cole lives in Brooklyn New York where he is working on his next book, a non-fiction narrative about Lagos. He is on the faculty at Bard College and is also a noted photographer.

Photo credit: Teju Cole

Author Interviews
3AM Magazine
Guernica

Read Alikes
If you liked Open City, you may also enjoy:

Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole
• eAudiobook
• eBook

Other Fiction

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
• Audiobook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
• eBook

The Rings of Saturn: an English Pilgrimage by W.G. Sebald

The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
• Audiobook
• eBook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Spurious by Lars Iyer
• eBook

Non-Fiction

Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe