Teju Cole

Teju Cole is rapidly becoming a new literary sensation in America. His novel Open City–which won the 2012 Pen/Hemingway Award and the New York City Book Award–is unlike anything you’ve ever read. The narrator, Julius, is a Nigerian psychiatry student who lives in Manhattan and likes to walk in the city. As he does, he has encounters. Most are small. He watches children playing in a park. He discovers that the woman next door died recently, and is quietly devastated, though he hardly knew her.  The novel’s blended texture reminds you of something: real life. You get a sense of this man and this city, but also of how we construct ourselves. The Seattle Times called it “Magnificent and shattering. A remarkably resonant feat of prose.”

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Links:

The New Yorker’s video: Teju Cole on Coming to America

Teju Cole’s website

Teju Cole’s twitter