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NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY DWIGHT GARNER THE NEW YORK TIMES bullNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle NPR The Root The Telegraph The Globe and MailNATIONAL BESTSELLER bull FINALIST PHILLIS WHEATLEY BOOK AWARD bull TEJU COLE WAS NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICANS OF THE YEAR BY NEW AFRICAN MAGAZINEFor 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 PENHemingway 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 ldquoyahoo yahoordquo diligently perpetrating email frauds from an Internet cafeacute 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 lifemdashcreative malevolent ambiguousmdashand 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 Thiefmdashoriginally published in Nigeria in mdashis 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 Yoursquove 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 ThiefldquoA luminous rumination on storytelling and place exile and return extraordinaryrdquomdashSan Francisco Chronicle ldquoCole 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 fashionrdquomdashThe Boston Globe ldquoCrisp affecting Cole constructs a narrative of fragments a series of episodes that he allows to resonaterdquomdashThe New York Times Book Review ldquoHugely rewarding both a celebration of one of the worldrsquos 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 homecomingmdashthe narrator has been away for fifteen years and must relearn how to navigate a place that was once homerdquomdashNPRldquoEvery 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 yoursquove finished readingrdquomdashDinaw Mengestu The Atlantic.
About the Author
I was born to Nigerian parents and grew up in Lagos. My mother taught French. My father was a business executive who exported chocolate. The first book I read (I was six) was an abridgment of Tom Sawyer. At fifteen I published cartoons regularly in Prime People, Nigeria's version of Vanity Fair. Two years later I moved to the United States. Since then, I've spent most of my time studying art history, except for an unhappy year in medical school. I currently live in Brooklyn.
