Open City: A Novel

“Cerebral and capacious, Teju Cole’s 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
 
Along 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 he’s 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 journey—which 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.