April 14, 2014
Novelist Cole's Open City brought him international attention, but this novel, first published in Nigeria and now currently being republished in the U.S. and the U.K., was actually his first. Set in contemporary Lagos, Nigeria, the novel follows a nameless narrator's visit to his homeland after a lengthy stay in the United States. Estranged from his mother and unemotional about his father's death, the protagonist seeks his humanity and redemption in art. Cole's crisp language captures how Lagosâthe home of numerous Internet scams and frequent power cutsâpossesses a violence that both disgusts his protagonist and fascinates him. With journalism-like objectivity, Cole by way of his narrator details a Nigeria that is violent and corrupt, but also multi-cultural and alive. This pared-down writing style comes at the cost of character development. (For example, the narrator's training as a psychiatrist is never really explored.) As a result, the novel reads more like a beautiful work of creative nonfiction. The structure is loose, a collection of observances of daily life in Lagos in which Cole presents the complexities of culture and poverty. In addition, Cole sprinkles dramatic black-and-white photos throughout the book, but it's his willingness to explore so many uncomfortable paradoxes that sears this narrative into our brains. Agent: Andrew Wylie, The Wylie Agency.
March 15, 2014
A Nigerian living in the U.S. finds corruption, delight and ghosts on a return visit to Lagos in this rich, rougher-edged predecessor to Cole's celebrated debut novel (Open City, 2011). First published in Nigeria in 2007, this novella records the unnamed narrator's impressions of the city he left 13 years earlier. His observations range from comic to bitterly critical, playing off memories of growing up in Lagos and his life abroad. Cole paints brisk scenes that convey the dangers and allure of the "gigantic metropolis" in prose that varies from plain to almost poetic to overwrought. The narrator says a woman holding a book by Michael Ondaatje "makes my heart leap up into my mouth and thrash about like a catfish in a bucket." Bribe-hungry police, a vibrant street market, perilous bus rides, brazen home invaders: From the locally commonplace emerge sharp contrasts with the West. Coming to the market, for instance, he recalls an 11-year-old boy burned alive for petty theft. In the city's many new Internet cafes, a "sign of the newly vital Nigerian economy," teens write emails to perpetrate the "advance fee fraud" for which the country has become infamous. The returnee laments the dilapidation and skewed historical record of the National Museum before admiring the world-class facilities of the Musical Society of Nigeria Centre. It's a graphic contrast that billboards questions bedeviling the narrator: Why did I leave? Should I return for good? What have I gained? Or lost? Such an exile's catechism could serve with slight variations the many displaced people Cole writes of in the "open city" of New York. And as with the novel, the influence of W.G. Sebald arises again here, not least in Cole's addition of photographs that are much like the novella's prose: uneven yet often evocative.
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April 15, 2014
After living in America for 15 years, a Nigerian writer returns to his homeland. Reunited with a beloved aunt, with whom he stays, he reconnects with a boyhood friend, now a struggling doctor, and visits the woman who was his first love, now married with a daughter, as he contemplates staying in Lagos. But he is struck by the omnipresent corruption, as officials at all levels, including police and soldiers, supplement often meager wages with bribes. He sees thieving area boys all around, Internet-scamming yahoo yahoo in cyber caf's, a jazz shop practicing piracy, and a national museum gone to ruin, its artifacts ill-maintained and its historical presentations inaccurate. Yet in addition to scoring high in corruption, Nigeria's claim to fame is that it is the most religious country in the world and its people the happiest. This novella, a revised version of the first book written by Nigerian Cole, author of the acclaimed Open City (2011), is a scathing but loving look at his native land in measured, polished prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)
October 1, 2013
In Cole's masterly 2011 debut, Open City, a PEN/Hemingway Prize winner and National Book Critics Circle finalist that received best book recognition from nearly two dozen publications, a Nigerian immigrant ambles reflectively through the streets of Manhattan. In this new work, an unnamed Nigerian writer who has returned home ambles reflectively through the streets of Lagos and discovers a grand, passionate city. As John Coltrane's music blends with the muezzin's call to prayer, the narrator sees a woman reading Michael Ondaatje and teenagers behaving illegally on the Internet, even as he talks to old friends and relatives as he tries to find his way. Open City was a distinctive and mesmerizing work, troublesome for some readers but a decided and exciting step ahead in the use of narrative, and readers will be anticipating. With a five-city tour.
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 1, 2014
When a young Nigerian man from New York visits family in Lagos, he is confronted with a city different from the one he remembers from 15 years earlier. Told in a series of short scenes, the young man's journey is chronicled from the infuriating Nigerian consulate in New York City to the multitude of people he encounters in Lagos and finally his journey back to America. In poetic language, the narrator describes the energy of Lagos, including bribing police officers, cheating gas station attendants, children waiting in line for precious water, riding a motor bike taxi through dangerous streets, and enduring the noise of generators and the stiflingly humid heat. During his visit, the young man finds that he has changed as much as Lagos. The vignettes are interesting, amusing, frightening, and strange in turns. Peter Jay Fernandez communicates the lassitude and heat of Lagos and its inhabitants as well as the frustration of the main character with his new view of the world. VERDICT A languorous but engaging listen. Recommended to fans of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart".--Terry Ann Lawler, Phoenix P.L.
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.