About this item
The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with outsize intensity. Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks meet a need for Julius they are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. Though he is navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation. But it is not only a physical landscape he covers Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journeywhich takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.
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.
