Teju Cole: Open City: A Novel (2011)

A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss, dislocation, and surrender, Teju Cole’s Open City seethes with intelligence. It is a profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our country and our world.

Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly, reflecting on 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.

Winner of the 2012 PEN/Hemingway Award.

Publisher Random House, 2011
ISBN 0812980093, 9780812980097
259 pages

review (Boyd Tonkin, The Independent)
review (James Wood, The New Yorker)
review (Miguel Syjuco, The New York Times)

wikipedia
publisher
google books

PDF (EPUB)
PDF (MOBI)