Teju Cole

A young man decides to visit Nigeria after years of absence. Ahead lies the difficult journey back to the family house and all its memories; meetings with childhood friends and above all, facing up to the paradox of Nigeria, whose present is as burdened by the past as it is facing a new future. Along the way, our narrator encounters life in Lagos. He is captivated by a woman reading on a danfo; attempts to check his email are frustrated by Yahoo boys; he is charmingly duped buying fuel. He admires the grace of an aunty, bereaved by armed robbers and is inspired by the new malls and cultural venues. The question is: Should he stay or should he leave? But before the story can even begin, he has to queue for his visa. Every Day is for the Thiefis a striking portrait of Nigeria in change. Through a series of cinematic portraits of everyday life in Lagos, Teju Cole provides a fresh approach to the returnee experience.

Life is hopeless but it is not serious We have to have danced while we could and later to have danced again in the telling Tunde the man at the centre of this novel reflects on the places and times of his life from his West African upbringing to his current work as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus He is a reader a listener and a traveller drawn to many different kinds of stories from history and the epic of friends family and strangers those found in books and films One man s personal lens refracts entire worlds and back again A weekend spent shopping for antiques is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions And a remarkable cascade of voices speak out from a pulsing metropolis Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that examines the passage of time and how we mark it It is a reckoning with human survival amidst history s own brutality which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy This is narration with all its senses alert a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature Praise for Open City Open Cit

The shadow of a tree in upstate New York. A hotel room in Switzerland. A young stranger in the Congo. In Blind Spot, readers will follow Teju Coles inimitable artistic vision into the visual realm, as he continues to refine the voice and intellectual obsessions that earned him such acclaim for Open City. In more than 150 pairs of images and surprising, lyrical text, Cole explores his complex relationship to the visual world through his two great passions: writing and photography. Blind Spot is a testament to the art of seeing by one of the most powerful and original voices in contemporary literature.

Teju Cole es un observador tan perspicaz como emotivo, dotado de una especial sensibilidad para captar la extrañeza latente en las realidades conocidas. El amplio abanico de temas que trata en los ensayos escritos para diversos medios y reunidos en este volumen atestigua la riqueza de sus intereses, que versan desde la politica hasta los viajes, pasando por la fotografia, la historia o la literatura. "Hay otro libro posible que incluye todo lo que no aparece en este [] tal vez tendria un tono mas critico, seria mas analitico e incluiria juicios mas argumentados. Pero este libro que el lector tiene entre las manos, aunque reune todos esos elementos, prefiere la epifania". La lectura de estos textos, persuasivos y desafiantes a un tiempo, nos brinda la oportunidad de observar el mundo desde perspectivas insolitas y descubrir cosas nuevas en el mas cotidiano de los paisajes."Cole propicia el asombro ante el bagaje intelectual disfrazado de improvisacion y levedad. Las cosas "conocidas y extrañas" del titulo son solo una, familiar y desconcertante al mismo tiempo, y resumen la experiencia de estar vivo emocional e intelectualmente en este momento historico".Patricio Pron, El Pais -Babelia"Cole se narra desembalando sus "entusiasmos mas vitales" de tal manera que el lector, a medida que avanza la lectura, descubre que sitios y que escritores son sus "piedras angulares"".Anna Maria Iglesia, El Mundo -La Esfera de Papel"La perspectiva global de Cole alcanza aqui su limite. La historia nos ofrece un enorme archivo de conocimiento que influye en las definiciones que construimos sobre nosotros mismos y las cuestiona. En todos los niveles de compromiso y critica, Cosas conocidas y extrañas constituye una travesia esencial y brillante".Claudia Rankine, El Mundo -El Cultural"En cuanto veo un libro firmado por Teju Cole, empiezo a deleitarme pensando en esa prosa austera y agil que tanto me maravilla. No sabia que esperar de Cosas conocidas y extrañas, pero sabia que la necesitaba. Y ha sido un autentico acierto penetrar en estas paginas".Dario Luque, Anika entre libros"El amplio abanico de temas que trata va desde la politica hasta los viajes, pasando por la historia o la literatura. Teju Cole es un observador perspicaz, dotado de una sensibilidad especial para captar la extrañeza latente en las realidades conocidas".La Opinion de Malaga"Con un estilo aparentemente leve, disfrazado de transparencia, Cole despliega su asombroso talento para hablarnos de calles y ciudades, literatura, fotografia y politica, pero tambien de sus miedos y sus dudas".Diario La Central"Si tuviera que definir la literatura de Cole, diria que es exploracion. Y en este proceso de reconocimiento o busqueda, persigue otro proposito todavia mayor, y mas complejo, como intentar comprender el propio comportamiento humano de tal manera que demuestra su interes por la realidad en la que vivimos. Magistral".Eric Gras, El Periodico Mediterraneo"La mirada del narrador funciona como una camara para captar la realidad. Ningun tema pasa desapercibido a la mirada analitica de Cole".LAvenç"Claro y raso: Teju Cole es, sobre todo, un literato, un artista de la palabra".Vicent Alonso, El Diario"Desafiante, lejos de la autoridad institucional o la restriccion generica, la coleccion de articulos Cosas conocidas y extrañas revela su multiplicidad espaciotemporal".Jose de Maria Romero Barea, Le Monde Diplomatique

Muhelos erzahlt und voll sinnlicher, bisweilen magischer und aufwuhlender Bilder groe Literatur. Jan Wilm, FAZ Ein junger Mann kehrt nach einigen Jahren in Amerika heim nach Lagos in Nigeria, an den Ort seiner Kindheit, den er vor vielen Jahren verlassen hat. Er kommt bei Verwandten unter, trifft alte Freunde, lasst sich durch die Straen treiben. Lagos ist anstrengend und korrupt, Verheiung und Zumutung in einem, voller Geschichten von spiritueller Groe und Verkommenheit. Jede Nacht ist ein vergeblicher Versuch, Ruhe zu finden. Und jeder Tag ein Spiegel, in dem er sich selbst immer klarer sieht. Soll er bleiben oder fliehen? In Teju Coles leuchtenden Satzen, in denen eine groe, gebrochene Liebe zum Ausdruck kommt, entsteht das poetische Portrat eines bedruckten Landes und der groten Metropole in Afrika.

Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling.Tunde, the man at the centre of this novel, reflects on the places and times of his life, from his West African upbringing to his current work as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, and a traveller drawn to many different kinds of stories: from history and the epic; of friends, family, and strangers; those found in books and films. One mans personal lens refracts entire worlds, and back again.A weekend spent shopping for antiques is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speak out from a pulsing metropolis.Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst "historys own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles" - but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. This is narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature.Praise for Open City:Open City is not a loud novel, nor a thriller, nor a nail-biter. What it is is a gorgeous, crystalline, and cumulative investigation of memory, identity, and erasure. It gathers its power inexorably, page by page, and ultimately reveals itself as nothing less than a searing tour de force. Teju Cole might just be a W. G. Sebald for the twenty-first century. Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot SeeBeautiful, subtle, and finally, original... James Wood, The New Yorker

The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me: mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with outsize intensity.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 Coles 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 world.

A blazingly intelligent first collection of essays from the award-winning author of Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief. With these pieces on politics, photography, travel, history and literature - many of which have become viral sensations, shared and debated around the globe - Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of todays most powerful and original voices. On page after page, deploying prose dense with beauty and ideas, he finds fresh and potent ways to interpret art, people and historical moments. Cole tells of his engagement with Virginia Woolf through her diaries, before reflecting on an episode of temporary blindness in New York. He looks at the rise of Instagram and interrogates the value of its images. He examines the transition of the candidate Obama, the avid reader, into a forever-war president on the global stage. Persuasive and provocative, erudite yet accessible, Known and Strange Things is an opportunity to live within Teju Coles wide-ranging enthusiasms, curiosities and passions, and a chance to see the world in surprising and affecting new frames.A book written with a scalpel, a microscope, and walking shoes, full of telling details and sometimes big surprises. Rebecca Solnit

1951, Baldwin est le premier Noir qui séjourne à Leukerbad (Haut Valais, Suisse). Les enfants crient «Neger!», les gens le dévisagent : qui est cet Américain qui ressemble aux indigènes d’Afrique don

1951, Baldwin est le premier Noir qui séjourne à Leukerbad (Haut Valais, Suisse). Les enfants crient «Neger!», les gens le dévisagent : qui est cet Américain qui ressemble aux indigènes d’Afrique don

Voici le récit d’un retour au pays difficile et émouvant. Le narrateur, Nigérian résidant à New York depuis quinze ans, part pour trois semaines à Lagos, sa ville natale. En 27 chapitres, il rend com

Dans une brocante du Maine, Tunde déniche un masque africain à l’origine trouble: a-t-il plus de valeur s’il a été arraché à sa culture, oufabriqué par un artisan pour un touriste blanc? Quel œil pos

Cerebral and capacious, Teju Coles novel asks what it means to roam freely.The New York Times (One of the 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years) Influential . . . makes you think about what kind of city is revealed to us based on where we cannot go.Katie Kitamura, bestselling author of Intimacies ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR WINNER: PEN/Hemingway Award, Rosenthal Foundation Award, New York City Book Award A timely and compelling argument for tolerance and moral character in times of extreme antagonism.The New York TimesOne of The Atlantics Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsAlong the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup, his present, his past. Though hes navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation.Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who provide insight on his journeywhich takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.Seething with intelligence and written in a clear, rhythmic voice, Open City is a haunting, mature, profound work about our country and our world. FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle Award, Young Lions Fiction Award A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, Newsweek, The New Republic, New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, GQ, Salon, Slate, New York, The Week, The Kansas City Star, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times

Julius, un jove psiquiatre nigeria resident en un hospital de Nova York, passeja pels carrers de Manhattan. Caminar sense rumb es converteix per a ell en una necessitat que lallibera de les constriccions de la seva feina, i que li ofereix la possibilitat afegida dobrir la seva ment a un fantasieig entre la literatura, lart o la musica i les seves relacions personals, el passat i el present. Als seus passeigs, explora cada raco de la ciutat. Pero Julius no solament recorre un espai fisic, sino que tambe en frequenta un altre, en el qual shi entrellacen un munt destimuls que linterpel·len. "Ciutat oberta" es una novel·la bellissima, i es tambe el descobriment lluminos duna veu tan original i subtil com extraordinaria.

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY DWIGHT GARNER, THE NEW YORK TIMES NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle | NPR | The Root | The Telegraph | The Globe and MailNATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST, PHILLIS WHEATLEY BOOK AWARD TEJU COLE WAS NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICANS OF THE YEAR BY NEW AFRICAN MAGAZINEFor readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Michael Ondaatje, Every Day Is for the Thief is a wholly original work of fiction by Teju Cole, whose critically acclaimed debut, Open City, was the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by more than twenty publications.Fifteen years is a long time to be away from home. It feels longer still because I left under a cloud. A young Nigerian living in New York City goes home to Lagos for a short visit, finding a city both familiar and strange. In a city dense with story, the unnamed narrator moves through a mosaic of life, hoping to find inspiration for his own. He witnesses the yahoo yahoo diligently perpetrating email frauds from an Internet cafe, longs after a mysterious woman reading on a public bus who disembarks and disappears into a bookless crowd, and recalls the tragic fate of an eleven-year-old boy accused of stealing at a local market. Along the way, the man reconnects with old friends, a former girlfriend, and extended family, taps into the energies of Lagos lifecreative, malevolent, ambiguousand slowly begins to reconcile the profound changes that have taken place in his country and the truth about himself.In spare, precise prose that sees humanity everywhere, interwoven with original photos by the author, Every Day Is for the Thieforiginally published in Nigeria in 2007is a wholly original work of fiction. This revised and updated edition is the first version of this unique book to be made available outside Africa. Youve never read a book like Every Day Is for the Thief because no one writes like Teju Cole.Praise for Every Day Is for the ThiefA luminous rumination on storytelling and place, exile and return . . . extraordinary.San Francisco Chronicle Cole is following in a long tradition of writerly walkers who, in the tradition of Baudelaire, make their way through urban spaces on foot and take their time doing so. Like Alfred Kazin, Joseph Mitchell, J. M. Coetzee, and W. G. Sebald (with whom he is often compared), Cole adds to the literature in his own zeitgeisty fashion.The Boston Globe

Julius, un joven psiquiatra nigeriano residente en un hospital neoyorquino, deambula por las calles de Manhattan. Caminar sin rumbo se convierte en una necesidad que le brinda la oportunidad de dejar la mente libre en un devaneo entre la literatura, el arte o la musica, sus relaciones personales, el pasado y el presente. En sus paseos explora cada rincon de la ciudad. Pero Julius no solo recorre un espacio fisico, sino tambien aquel en el que se entretejen otras muchas voces que le interpelan. Ciudad abierta, novela bellisima y envolvente, supone el descubrimiento de una voz tan original y sutil como extraordinaria."Esta es una novela distinta. Es distinta en estructura, en la amplicacion del punto de vista y en su escritura, lo cual es como decir que estamos ante un libro extraordinariamente sugestivo y un verdadero derroche de arrojo literario. Ciudad abierta representa un logro memorable".Jose Maria Guelbenzu, El Pais

Un joven médico regresa a su Lagos natal tras vivir quince años en Nueva York. La Nigeria de su infancia ya no existe; en su lugar encuentra una ciudad ganada por el consumismo, el desdén y la globalizacion. El espiritu del siglo XXI impregna el globo entero y de Manhattan a Lagos el mundo es una maquina bien engrasada, siempre y cuando se disponga de dinero para pagar, ya sea el soborno del funcionario de la administracion estadounidense que expide un visado, o el extra que el empleado de la gasolinera nigeriana se cobra por rellenar el deposito. "Cada dia es del ladron" es una fabula sobre la corrupcion moral y politica, un relato conmovedor sobre el significado de volver al hogar."Teju Cole es un representante clave de la gran nueva narrativa".Enrique Vila-Matas, "El Pais""El hallazgo del detalle significativo hace de Cole uno de los escritores mas inmediatamente reconocibles de la literatura estadounidense contemporanea".Patricio Pron, "El Boomeran(g)""Cole pinta y colorea una fabula sobre la corrupcion moral y politica en Nigeria".Antonio Bordon, "La Provincia""El retrato que ofrece es tan emocional que resulta imposible permanecer impasible".Eric Gras, "El Periodico Mediterraneo""La cuestion identitaria vuelve a ser fundamental: el narrador certifica una y otra vez que la frustracion estructura el retorno imposible a Nigeria".Jordi Nopca, "Ara""Un retrato de Nigeria divertido, mordaz y triste a la vez, donde el narrador pasa de la inicial e inevitable ira que provoca la situacion lamentable del pais a un amor tan profundo como desencantado. Teju Cole es uno de los escritores mas brillantes de su generacion".Salman Rushdie

Teju Cole es un observador tan perspicaz como emotivo, dotado de una especial sensibilidad para captar la extrañeza latente en las realidades conocidas. El amplio abanico de temas quetrata en los ensayos escritos para diversos medios y reunidos en este vo

De la alianza entre los artistas afroamericanos Fazal Sheikh y Teju Cole surge esta reflexión sobre las cuestiones trascendentales que en estos tiempos convulsos convocan a la humanidad: los crímenes de las politicas migratorias, la xenofobia y el individualismo, pero tambien la hospitalidad, el espejo amoroso que es el rostro del otro y la emocion ante la posibilidad de formar parte de una comunidad de semejantes. Fue en 2018 cuando los autores crearon este libro con el fin de encontrar una nueva forma de hablar de la reaparicion de problemas muy antiguos. Mediante la mezcla de los textos de Teju Cole y las fotografias tomadas por Fazal Sheikh durante mas de treinta años, ambos autores establecen un dialogo entre si y entre la historia, con una variedad de fuentes que van desde Homero y Shakespeare hasta Martin Luther King Jr., Toni Morrison y la teoria postcolonial. La actualidad de las guerras y los conflictos de hoy hace que este Archipielago humano sea mas urgente que nunca."Nuestro anhelo de un hogar, nuestra fragilidad y rabioso orgullo son parte de la extrañeza sin causa que llamamos humanidad. Fazal Sheikh y Teju Cole la reflejan en un espejo desgarrador y hermoso hecho de palabras e imagenes que nos recuerda que todos somos parte de una misma tragedia y una mism