Reminiscent of the works of W. G. Sebald, this dreamy, incantatory debut was the most beautiful novel I read this year the kind of book that remains on your nightstand long after you finish so that you can continue dipping in occasionally as a nighttime consolation. The New Republic
A psychological hand grenade. The Atlantic
A meditative and startlingly clear-eyed first novel. Newsweek
Magnificent . . . a remarkably resonant feat of prose. Seattle Times
A precise and poetic meditation on love, race, identity, friendship, memory, [and] dislocation. The Economist
[Teju] Cole writes beautifully; his protagonist is unique; and his novel, utterly thrilling. The Globe and Mail
Lean and mean and bristles with intelligence. The multi-culti characters and streets of New York are sharply observed and feel just right. . . . Toward the end, there s a poignant, unexpected scene in a tailor s shop that s an absolute knockout. Salon
I couldn t stop reading Teju Cole s debut novel and was blown away by his ability to capture the human psyche with such beautiful yet subtle prose. Slate
An indelible debut novel . . . [It] does precisely what literature should do: it brings together thoughts and beliefs, and blurs borders. . . . A compassionate and masterly work. The New York Times Book Review
The cool, concise prose of Open City draws you in more quietly, then breaks your heart. Who knew that taking a long walk in Manhattan could be so profound? New York
Beautiful, subtle, and finally, original . . . Cole has made his novel as close to a diary as a novel can get, with room for reflection, autobiography, stasis, and repetition. This is extremely difficult, and many accomplished novelists would botch it, since a sure hand is needed to make the writer s careful stitching look like a thread merely being followed for its own sake. Mysteriously, wonderfully, Cole does not botch it. The New Yorker
In Cole s intelligent, finely observed portrait, Julius drifts through cities on three continents, repeatedly drawn into conversation with solitary souls like him: people struggling with the emotional rift of having multiple homelands but no home. GQ
[A] complicated portrait of a narrator whose silences speak as loudly as his words all articulated in an effortlessly elegant prose . . . Teju Cole has achieved, in this book, a rare balance. He captures life s urgent banality, and he captures, too, the ways in which the greater subjects . . . glimmer darkly in the interstices. The New York Review of Books
Open City is not a loud novel, nor a thriller, nor a nail-biter. What it is is a gorgeous, crystalline, and cumulative investigation of memory, identity, and erasure. It gathers its power inexorably, page by page, and ultimately reveals itself as nothing less than a searing tour de force. Teju Cole might just be a W. G. Sebald for the twenty-first century. Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize winning author of All the Light We Cannot See
