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Open City: A Novel - Teju Cole
Open City: A Novel
by: (author)
3.63 95
“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... show more
“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 country and our world.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN: 9781400068098 (1400068096)
ASIN: 1400068096
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Pages no: 272
Edition language: English
Bookstores:
Community Reviews
Mommy, am I cult?
Mommy, am I cult? rated it
2.0 Open City: A Novel
I read this on the wave of the great Everyday is for the Thief. At first, it seemed that Cole is the king of non-story fiction: there is no structured plot in sight. In Everyday is for the thief, it resulted in a great impression of Nigerians' psyche. However, Open City only showed me a closeted ess...
Wasted Literature
Wasted Literature rated it
2.5
In “Open City”, Teju Cole attempts to play with our perspective by showing that America is a great distraction from the true essence of humanity: suffering. The inevitable end to this illusion is a death of historical perspective with dangerous consequences. How it’s dangerous exactly, I’m not entir...
All the World's a Page
All the World's a Page rated it
4.0
Open City, Teju Cole's début novel, is a strangely wonderful perambulatory reading experience: insightful, lyrical, decidedly modern and politically prescient. However despite it's numerous successes the overall novel feels a bit like an attempt. In Barthes' "The Death of the Author" he writes (whic...
newskepticx's blog
newskepticx's blog rated it
3.0
One of the most elegant writers I've read.
jbradway
jbradway rated it
4.0 Open City: A Novel
Here's a short review (because a GoodReads server glitch just lost a longer review and I'm not going to rewrite the whole thing):Teju Cole handles the formless, plotless, rambling novel with considerably more grace than I would have expected in a first-time novelist. Narrator Julius has a strange pe...
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