Teju Cole: Every Day is for the Thief, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Kurzbeschreibung

For readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, JM Coetzee, and Michael Ondaatje, "Every Day Is for the Thief" is a wholly original work of fiction by Teju Cole, whose critically acclaimed debut, Open City, was the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by more than twenty publications.

Beschreibung

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, THE TELEGRAPH, AND THE GLOBE AND MAIL

TEJU COLE WAS NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICANS OF THE YEAR BY NEW AFRICAN MAGAZINE

For readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Michael Ondaatje, Every Day Is for the Thief is a wholly original work of fiction by Teju Cole, whose critically acclaimed debut, Open City, was the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by more than twenty publications.

Fifteen years is a long time to be away from home. It feels longer still because I left under a cloud.

A young Nigerian living in New York City goes home to Lagos for a short visit, finding a city both familiar and strange. In a city dense with story, the unnamed narrator moves through a mosaic of life, hoping to find inspiration for his own. He witnesses the "yahoo yahoo" diligently perpetrating email frauds from an Internet café, longs after a mysterious woman reading on a public bus who disembarks and disappears into a bookless crowd, and recalls the tragic fate of an eleven-year-old boy accused of stealing at a local market.

Along the way, the man reconnects with old friends, a former girlfriend, and extended family, taps into the energies of Lagos life - creative, malevolent, ambiguous - and slowly begins to reconcile the profound changes that have taken place in his country and the truth about himself.

In spare, precise prose that sees humanity everywhere, interwoven with original photos by the author, Every Day Is for the Thief - originally published in Nigeria in 2007 - is a wholly original work of fiction. This revised and updated edition is the first version of this unique book to be made available outside Africa. You've never read a book like Every Day Is for the Thief because no one writes like Teju Cole.

Praise for Every Day Is for the Thief

"A luminous rumination on storytelling and place, exile and return . . . extraordinary." - San Francisco Chronicle

"[Teju] Cole is following in a long tradition of writerly walkers who, in the tradition of Baudelaire, make their way through urban spaces on foot and take their time doing so. Like Alfred Kazin, Joseph Mitchell, J. M. Coetzee, and W. G. Sebald (with whom he is often compared), Cole adds to the literature in his own zeitgeisty fashion." - The Boston Globe

"Crisp, affecting . . . Cole constructs a narrative of fragments, a series of episodes that he allows to resonate." - The New York Times Book Review

"Hugely rewarding . . . [ Every Day Is for the Thief ] is both a celebration of one of the world's most vibrant cities and a lament over what can be one of the most frustrating and difficult places to live. It is also a story of family breakup and an uneasy homecoming - the narrator has been away for fifteen years and must relearn how to navigate a place that was once home." - NPR

"Shimmering . . . transcendent." - The Seattle Times

"Wonderful . . . a book that never fails to find a thoughtful and essential thing to say." - Los Angeles Times

"Fearless, nimble, and surprising." - The Daily Beast

From the Hardcover edition.

Rezension

"A luminous rumination on storytelling and place, exile and return . . . extraordinary." - San Francisco Chronicle

"[Teju] Cole is following in a long tradition of writerly walkers who, in the tradition of Baudelaire, make their way through urban spaces on foot and take their time doing so. Like Alfred Kazin, Joseph Mitchell, J. M. Coetzee, and W. G. Sebald (with whom he is often compared), Cole adds to the literature in his own zeitgeisty fashion." - The Boston Globe

"Crisp, affecting . . . Cole constructs a narrative of fragments, a series of episodes that he allows to resonate." - The New York Times Book Review

"Hugely rewarding . . . [ Every Day Is for the Thief ] is both a celebration of one of the world's most vibrant cities and a lament over what can be one of the most frustrating and difficult places to live. It is also a story of family breakup and an uneasy homecoming - the narrator has been away for fifteen years and must relearn how to navigate a place that was once home." - NPR

"Shimmering . . . transcendent." - The Seattle Times

"Wonderful . . . a book that never fails to find a thoughtful and essential thing to say." - Los Angeles Times

"Fearless, nimble, and surprising." - The Daily Beast

"A Teju Cole novel is a reading experience matched by few contemporary writers." - Flavorwire

" Every Day Is for the Thief, by turns funny, mournful, and acerbic, offers a portrait of Nigeria in which anger, perhaps the most natural response to the often lamentable state of affairs there, is somehow muted and deflected by the author's deep engagement with the country: a profoundly disenchanted love. Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation." - Salman Rushdie

"[A] tightly focused but still marvelously capacious little novel . . . built with cool originality . . . The house of literature [Cole] is busy creating is an in-between space with fluid dimensions, resisting entrenchment." - The Christian Science Monitor

"Direct and bracing, a short, sharp counterpunch to those who seek to romanticise Africa." - The Telegraph (UK)

" Every Day Is for the Thief holds something for people with all levels of familiarity with Nigeria. It is an introduction and a provocation, a beautifully simple portrait and a nuanced examination. It invites you to steal a glimpse of Lagos." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A worthy precursor and, in a way, a companion piece to Cole's highly acclaimed Open City . . . Cole's narrator is compelling - someone with whom you want to spend time ambling, looking and chatting. I was happy to be along for the journey." - The Plain Dealer

"[ Every Day Is for the Thief ] expands and reinforces the accomplishments of Open City, confirming along the way that Teju is one of the foremost - for the lack of a better term - bicultural writers." - Aleksandar Hemon, Bomb

" Every Day Is for the Thief is a vivid, episodic evocation of the truism that you can't go home again; but that doesn't mean you're not free to try. A return to his native Nigeria plunges Cole's charming narrator into a tempest of chaos, contradiction, and kinship in a place both endearingly familiar and unnervingly strange. The result is a tale that engages and disturbs." - Billy Collins

"Rich imagery and sharp prose . . . widely praised as one of the best fictional depictions of Africa in recent memory." - The New Yorker

" Every Day Is for the Thief is unapologetically a novel of ideas: a diagnosis of the systemic corruption in Cole's native Lagos and of corruption's psychological effects. But, remarkably, the book avoids any of the chunkiness that usually accompanies such work. Emotional and intellectual life are woven too tightly together. The ideas make the character and vice versa." - The New Republic

" Every Day Is for the Thief is a testament to [Nigeria's] power to inspire." - Vanity Fair

"Excellently crafted . . . Optimism regarding the future of [Nigeria] pulsates stea

Klappentext

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY DWIGHT GARNER, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle | NPR | The Root | The Telegraph | The Globe and Mail

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • FINALIST, PHILLIS WHEATLEY BOOK AWARD • TEJU COLE WAS NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICANS OF THE YEAR BY NEW AFRICAN MAGAZINE

For readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Michael Ondaatje, Every Day Is for the Thief is a wholly original work of fiction by Teju Cole, whose critically acclaimed debut, Open City, was the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by more than twenty publications.

Fifteen years is a long time to be away from home. It feels longer still because I left under a cloud.

A young Nigerian living in New York City goes home to Lagos for a short visit, finding a city both familiar and strange. In a city dense with story, the unnamed narrator moves through a mosaic of life, hoping to find inspiration for his own. He witnesses the "yahoo yahoo" diligently perpetrating email frauds from an Internet café, longs after a mysterious woman reading on a public bus who disembarks and disappears into a bookless crowd, and recalls the tragic fate of an eleven-year-old boy accused of stealing at a local market.

Along the way, the man reconnects with old friends, a former girlfriend, and extended family, taps into the energies of Lagos life-creative, malevolent, ambiguous-and slowly begins to reconcile the profound changes that have taken place in his country and the truth about himself.

In spare, precise prose that sees humanity everywhere, interwoven with original photos by the author, Every Day Is for the Thief-originally published in Nigeria in 2007-is a wholly original work of fiction. This revised and updated edition is the first version of this unique book to be made available outside Africa. You've never read a book like Every Day Is for the Thief because no one writes like Teju Cole.

Praise for Every Day Is for the Thief

"A luminous rumination on storytelling and place, exile and return . . . extraordinary."-San Francisco Chronicle

"Cole is following in a long tradition of writerly walkers who, in the tradition of Baudelaire, make their way through urban spaces on foot and take their time doing so. Like Alfred Kazin, Joseph Mitchell, J. M. Coetzee, and W. G. Sebald (with whom he is often compared), Cole adds to the literature in his own zeitgeisty fashion."-The Boston Globe

Auszüge aus dem Buch

One

Iwake up late the morning I'm meant to go to the consulate. As I gather my documents just before setting out, I call the hospital to remind them I won't be in until the afternoon. Then I enter the subway and make my way over to Second Avenue and, without much trouble, find the consulate. It occupies several floors of a skyscraper. A windowless room on the eighth floor serves as the section for consular services. Most of the people there on the Monday morning of my visit are Nigerians, almost all of them middle--aged. The men are bald, the women elaborately coiffed, and there are twice as many men as there are women. But there are also unexpected faces: a tall Italian--looking man, a girl of East Asian origin, other Africans. Each person takes a number from a red machine as they enter the dingy room. The carpet is dirty, of the indeterminate color shared by all carpets in public places. A wall--mounted television plays a news program through a haze of static. The news continues for a short while, then there is a broadcast of a football match between Enyimba and a Tunisian club. The people in the room fill out forms.

There are as many blue American passports in sight as green Nigerian ones. Most of the people can be set into one of three categories: new citizens of the United States, dual citizens of the United States and Nigeria, and citizens of Nigeria who are taking their American children home for the first time. I am one of the dual citizens, and I am there to have a new Nigerian passport issued. My number is called after twenty minutes. Approaching the window with my forms, I make the same supplicant gesture I have observed in others. The brusque young man seated behind the glass asks if I have the money order. No, I don't, I say. I had hoped cash would be acceptable. He points to a sign pasted on the glass: "No cash please, money orders only." He has a name tag on. The fee for a new passport is eighty--five dollars, as indicated on the website of the consulate, but it hadn't been clear that they don't accept cash. I leave the building, walk to Grand Central Terminal, fifteen minutes away, stand in line, purchase a money order, and walk the fifteen minutes back. It is cold outside. On my return some forty minutes later, the waiting room is full. I take a new number, make out the money order to the consulate, and wait.

A small group has gathered around the service window. One man begs audibly when he is told to come back at three to pick up his passport:

- -Abdul, I have a flight at five, please now. I've got to get back to Boston, please, can anything be done?

There is a wheedling tone in his voice, and the feeling of desperation one senses about him isn't helped by his dowdy appearance, brown polyester sweater and brown trousers. A stressed--out man in stressed--out clothes. Abdul speaks into the microphone:

- -What can I do? The person who is supposed to sign it is not here. That's why I said come back at three.

- -Look, look, that's my ticket. Abdul, come on now, just look at it. It says five o'clock. I can't miss that flight. I just can't miss it.

The man continues to plead, thrusting a piece of paper under the glass. Abdul looks at the ticket with showy reluctance and, exasperated, speaks in low tones into the microphone.

- -What can I do? The person is not here. Okay, please go and sit down. I'll see what can be done. But I can't promise anything.

The man slinks away, and immediately several others rise from their seats and jostle in front of the window, forms in hand.

- -Please, I need mine quickly too. Abeg, just put it next to his.

Abdul ignores them and calls out the next number in the sequence. Some continue to pace near the window. Others retake their seats. One