Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction

Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction

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

NATIONAL BESTSELLER â€¢ FINALIST, PHILLIS WHEATLEY BOOK AWARD â€¢ 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.
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Fifteen years is a long time to be away from home. It feels longer still because I left under a cloud.
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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 â€œyahoo yahooâ€ diligently perpetrating email frauds from an Internet cafÃ©, 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.
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Along the way, the man reconnects with old friends, a former girlfriend, and extended family, taps into the energies of Lagos lifeâ€”creative, malevolent, ambiguousâ€”and slowly begins to reconcile the profound changes that have taken place in his country and the truth about himself.
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In spare, precise prose that sees humanity everywhere, interwoven with original photos by the author, Every Day Is for the Thiefâ€”originally published in Nigeria in 2007â€”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. Youâ€™ve never read a book like Every Day Is for the Thief because no one writes like Teju Cole.
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Praise for Every Day Is for the Thief

â€œA luminous rumination on storytelling and place, exile and return . . . extraordinary.â€â€”San Francisco Chronicle
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â€œCole 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.â€â€”The Boston Globe
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â€œCrisp, affecting . . . Cole constructs a narrative of fragments, a series of episodes that he allows to resonate.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review
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â€œHugely rewarding . . . both a celebration of one of the worldâ€™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 homecomingâ€”the narrator has been away for fifteen years and must relearn how to navigate a place that was once home.â€â€”NPR

â€œ[Every Day Is for the Thief has] a restraint that allows [Cole] to slip in these exquisitely rendered observations on life, love, art that leave you feeling richer and more attuned to your own reality once youâ€™ve finished reading.â€â€”Dinaw Mengestu, The Atlantic

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2014-03-25
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2014-03-25
Format	Kindle eBook

Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction

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