Teju Cole

Open City (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

'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 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 world.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Faber & Faber
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. August 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780571279449
• Artikelnr.: 38223254

Autorenporträt

Teju Cole was raised in Nigeria and came to the United States in 1992. He is a writer, photographer, and professional historian of early Netherlandish art. Open City is his first novel. He lives in New York City.

Rezensionen

Reminiscent of the works of W. G. Sebald, this dreamy, incantatory debut was the most beautiful novel I read this year the kind of book that remains on your nightstand long after you finish so that you can continue dipping in occasionally as a nighttime consolation. The New Republic

A psychological hand grenade. The Atlantic

A meditative and startlingly clear-eyed first novel. Newsweek

Magnificent . . . a remarkably resonant feat of prose. Seattle Times

A precise and poetic meditation on love, race, identity, friendship, memory, [and] dislocation. The Economist

[Teju] Cole writes beautifully; his protagonist is unique; and his novel, utterly thrilling. The Globe and Mail

Lean and mean and bristles with intelligence. The multi-culti characters and streets of New York are sharply observed and feel just right. . . . Toward the end, there s a poignant, unexpected scene in a tailor s shop that s an absolute knockout. Salon

I couldn t stop reading Teju Cole s debut novel and was blown away by his ability to capture the human psyche with such beautiful yet subtle prose. Slate

An indelible debut novel . . . [It] does precisely what literature should do: it brings together thoughts and beliefs, and blurs borders. . . . A compassionate and masterly work. The New York Times Book Review

The cool, concise prose of Open City draws you in more quietly, then breaks your heart. Who knew that taking a long walk in Manhattan could be so profound? New York

Beautiful, subtle, and finally, original . . . Cole has made his novel as close to a diary as a novel can get, with room for reflection, autobiography, stasis, and repetition. This is extremely difficult, and many accomplished novelists would botch it, since a sure hand is needed to make the writer s careful stitching look like a thread merely being followed for its own sake. Mysteriously, wonderfully, Cole does not botch it. The New Yorker

In Cole s intelligent, finely observed portrait, Julius drifts through cities on three continents, repeatedly drawn into conversation with solitary souls like him: people struggling with the emotional rift of having multiple homelands but no home. GQ

[A] complicated portrait of a narrator whose silences speak as loudly as his words all articulated in an effortlessly elegant prose . . . Teju Cole has achieved, in this book, a rare balance. He captures life s urgent banality, and he captures, too, the ways in which the greater subjects . . . glimmer darkly in the interstices. The New York Review of Books

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 See