A powerful, intimate novel that masterfully explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world—from the award-winning author of Open City.

A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing metropolis.

We’re invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, a traveler, drawn to many different kinds of stories: stories from history and epic; stories of friends, family, and strangers; stories found in books and films. Together these stories make up his days. In aggregate these days comprise a life.

Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that engages brilliantly with literature, music, race, and history as it examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst “history’s own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles,” but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. As he did in his magnificent debut Open City, Teju Cole once again offers narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature.

Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling. Tunde, the man at the centre of this novel, reflects on the places and times of his life, from his West African upbringing to his current work as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, and a traveller drawn to many different kinds of stories: from history and the epic; of friends, family, and strangers; those found in books and films. One man's personal lens refracts entire worlds, and back again. A weekend spent shopping for antiques is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speak out from a pulsing metropolis. Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst "history's own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles" - but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. This is narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature. Praise for Open City: '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 'Beautiful, subtle, and finally, original...' James Wood, The New Yorker

"Darkness is not empty," writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a collection of essays that meditate on what it means to keep our humanity-and witness the humanity of others-in a time of darkness. Cole is well-known as a master of the essay form, and in Black Paper he is writing at the peak of his skill, as he models how to be closely attentive to experience-to not just see and take in, but to think critically about what we are seeing and not seeing. Wide-ranging in their subject matter, the essays are connected by ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole's writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment of our history through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the color black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about the color black and its numerous connotations. As he describes the carbon copy process in his epilogue: "Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white. Black transported the meaning."

As We Rise presents an exciting compilation of photographs from African diasporic culture. With over one hundred works by Black artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the United States, South America, as well as throughout the African continent, this volume provides a timely exploration of Black identity on both sides of the Atlantic. As Teju Cole describes in his preface, "Too often in the larger culture, we see images of Black people in attitudes of despair, pain, or brutal isolation. As We Rise gently refuses that. It is not that people are always in an attitude of celebration-no, that would be a reverse but corresponding falsehood-but rather that they are present as human beings, credible, fully engaged in their world." Drawn from Dr. Kenneth Montague's Wedge Collection in Toronto-a Black-owned collection dedicated to artists of African descent-As We Rise looks at the multifaceted ideas of Black life through the lenses of community, identity, and power. Artists such as Stan Douglas, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Barkley L. Hendricks, Texas Isaiah, Liz Johnson Artur, Seydou Keita, Deana Lawson, Jamel Shabazz, and Carrie Mae Weems, touch on themes of agency, beauty, joy, belonging, subjectivity, and self-representation. Writings by Isolde Brielmaier, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Mark Sealy, Teka Selman, and Deborah Willis among others provide insight and commentary on this monumental collection.

A profound book of essays from a celebrated master of the form. "Darkness is not empty," writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a book that meditates on what it means to sustain our humanity-and witness the humanity of others-in a time of darkness. One of the most celebrated essayists of his generation, Cole here plays variations on the essay form, modeling ways to attend to experience-not just to take in but to think critically about what we sense and what we don't. Wide-ranging but thematically unified, the essays address ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole's writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment of our history through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the color black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about blackness and its numerous connotations. As he describes the carbon-copy process in his epilogue: "Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white sheet. Black transported the meaning."

A young man returns to Nigeria after fifteen years in New York. The country of his childhood has changed: it has found fast-food restaurants, email cafes, contempt for authority and the all-consuming draw of 'money for nothing'. From the consulate back in Manhattan to the dusty streets of Lagos, life runs like clockwork -- as long as you can pay the fee: a bribe for the visa clerk; a 'Christmas gift' at immigration. Petrol pumps overcharge and internet cafes overflow with scammers. Every Day is for the Thief is a candid tale of political and spiritual corruption, and a moving account of what it means to go home.

Dayanita Singh is the winner of the 2022 Hasselblad Award. With this book, the internationally celebrated artist Dayanita Singh returns to her artistic beginnings. In the catalogue for the first comprehensive retrospective, the first stop of which is hosted by the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, Singh presents early works from her 1980-1986 oeuvre. From hundreds of slides and contact prints, the artist made a selection of personal and powerful black-and-white photographs. As a rediscovery and look into her own past, the theme of the "archive", central to Singh's work, takes on a central dimension here. The media of photography, installation and book intertwine in Singh's work in a unique way, which is why this book also features recent photographs from the exhibition.

The bestselling debut novel from a writer heralded as the twenty-first-century W. G. Sebald. A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss and surrender, Open City follows a young Nigerian doctor as he wanders aimlessly along the streets of Manhattan. For Julius the walks are a release from the tight regulations of work, from the emotional fallout of a failed relationship, from lives past and present on either side of the Atlantic. Isolated amid crowds of bustling strangers, Julius criss-crosses not just physical landscapes but social boundaries too, encountering people whose otherness sheds light on his own remarkable journey from Nigeria to New York - as well as into the most unrecognisable facets of his own soul.

Kerry James Marshall is one of America's greatest living painters. History of Painting presents a groundbreaking body of new work that engages with the history of the medium itself. In Kerry James Marshall: History of Painting, the artist has widened his scope to include both figurative and nonfigurative works that deal explicitly with art history, race, and gender, as well as paintings that force us to reexamine how artworks are received in the world and in the art market. In all the paintings in this book, Marshall's critique of history and of dominant white narratives is present, even as the subjects of the paintings move between reproductions of auction catalogues, abstract works, and scenes of everyday life. Essays by Hal Foster and Teju Cole help readers navigate Marshall's masterful vision, decoding complexly layered works such as Untitled (Underpainting), 2018, and Marshall's own artistic philosophy. This catalogue is published on the occasion of Marshall's eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, London in 2018.

A unique blend of travelogue, musings and poetry, A Stranger's Pose draws the reader into a world of encounters haunted by the absence of home, estrangement from a lover and family tragedies. The author's recollections and reflections of fragments of his journeys to African cities, from Dakar to Douala, Bamako to Benin, and Khartoum to Casablanca, offer a compelling and very personal meditation on the meaning of home and the generosity of strangers to a lone traveller. Alongside accounts of the author's own travels are other narratives about movement, intimacy, the power of language and translation. Whilst echoing the writings of Anne Michaels and John Berger, this remarkable book charts a path of its own that will redefine travel writing.

In the period leading up to the November 3, 2020 elections in the United States, Teju Cole began to photograph his kitchen counter in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Working in the still life tradition of Chardin, Cezanne, and the Dutch masters, as well as such contemporary photographers as Laura Letinsky and Jan Groover, he photographed every day over the course of five weeks. Unlike those illustrious forbears, Cole left his arrangements entirely to chance, “the bowls and plates moving in their unpredictable constellations.” What emerges is a surprising portrait, across time, of one kitchen counter in one home at a time of social, cultural, and political upheaval. Alongside the photographs is a long written essay, as wide-ranging in its concerns—hunger, fasting, mourning, slavery, intimacy, painting, poetry and the history of photography—as the photographs are delimited in theirs. The text and photographic sequences are interspersed with an anonymous handwritten eighteenth century cookbook from Cambridge. Golden Apple of the Sun is a luminous and humane work, presented with the formal boldness and oblique intelligence we have come to expect from Teju Cole.

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 "yahoo yahoo" diligently perpetrating email frauds from an Internet cafe, 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 life--creative, malevolent, ambiguous--and 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 Thief"--originally published in Nigeria in 2007--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. You've 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 Thief"
" Teju Cole's] novels are lean, expertly sustained performances. The places he can go, you feel, are just about limitless."--"The New York Times"
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"By turns funny, mournful, and acerbic . . . Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation."--Salman Rushdie
"Crisp, affecting . . . Taking his cues from W. G. Sebald, John Berger, and Bruce Chatwin, Cole constructs a narrative of fragments, a series of episodes that he allows to resonate."--"The New York Times Book Review "(Editors' Choice)
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"Remarkable . . . By the end of the novel the accumulation of experience has left both the narrator and the reader changed. . . . This is an extraordinary novel, a radiant meditation on the nature of happiness and faith, corruption, misfortune and belonging."--"San Francisco Chronicle"
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"Cole is our premier novelist of walking out the door and getting mixed up in something. . . . He] has a knack for elevating each individual encounter into something weighty and poetic."--"The Washington Post"
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"Shimmering . . . Cole has a way of superimposing emotional landscapes over his portraits of physical places that is transcendent."--"The Seattle Times"
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""Every Day Is for the Thief" is a wonderful meditation on modern African life that will help cement Cole's reputation as a prose stylist."--"Los Angeles Times"
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""Every Day Is for the Thief" is a vivid, episodic evocation of the truism that you can't go home again; but that doesn't mean you're not free to try."--Billy Collins" "

A "New York Times" Notable Book - One of the ten top novels of the year --"Time" and NPR
NAMED A BEST BOOK ON MORE THAN TWENTY END-OF-THE-YEAR LISTS, INCLUDING "The New Yorker" - "The Atlantic" - "The Economist" - "Newsweek"/The Daily Beast - "The New Republic" - New York "Daily News - Los Angeles Times" - "The Boston Globe" - "The Seattle Times" - Minneapolis "Star Tribune - GQ - "Salon - Slate - "New York" magazine - "The Week""- The Kansas City Star" - "Kirkus Reviews"
A haunting novel about identity, dislocation, and history, Teju Cole's "Open City" is a profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our country and our world.
Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius wanders, reflecting on his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. He encounters people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey--which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.
" A] prismatic debut . . . beautiful, subtle, and] original.""--The New Yorker"
"A psychological hand grenade."--"The Atlantic"
"Magnificent . . . a remarkably resonant feat of prose.""--The Seattle Times"
"A precise and poetic meditation on love, race, identity, friendship, memory, and] dislocation.""--The Economist"

The shadow of a tree in upstate New York. A hotel room in Switzerland. A young stranger in the Congo. In Blind Spot, readers will follow Teju Cole's inimitable artistic vision into the visual realm, as he continues to refine the voice and intellectual obsessions that earned him such acclaim for Open City. In more than 150 pairs of images and surprising, lyrical text, Cole explores his complex relationship to the visual world through his two great passions: writing and photography. Blind Spot is a testament to the art of seeing by one of the most powerful and original voices in contemporary literature.

Shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A blazingly intelligent first collection of essays from the award-winning author of Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief. With these pieces on politics, photography, travel, history and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of today's most powerful and original voices, covering subjects as diverse as Virginia Woolf, W.G Sebald, Instagram, Barack Obama and Boko Haram. Persuasive and provocative, erudite yet accessible, Known and Strange Things is an opportunity to live within Teju Cole's wide-ranging enthusiasms, curiosities and passions, and a chance to see the world in surprising and affecting new frames.

________________ 'This anthology will help turn your intellectual understanding of oppression into an emotional one' - New Statesman 'Thanks for being who you are and for giving us such exposure to wonderful people. Palestine is proud of you' - Suad Amiry ________________ The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008. Bringing together writers from all corners of the globe, it aims to help Palestinians break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen their artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, 'the power of culture over the culture of power'. Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems and stories from some of the world's most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and courage in the most desperate of situations. Contributors: Susan Abulhawa, Suad Amiry, Victoria Brittain, Jehan Bseiso, Teju Cole, Molly Crabapple, Selma Dabbagh, Mahmoud Darwish, Najwan Darwish, Geoff Dyer, Yasmin El-Rifae, Adam Foulds, Ru Freeman, Omar Robert Hamilton, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Mohammed Hanif, Jeremy Harding, Rachel Holmes, John Horner, Remi Kanazi, Brigid Keenan, Mercedes Kemp, Omar El-Khairy, Nancy Kricorian, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jamal Mahjoub, Henning Mankell, Claire Messud, China Mieville, Pankaj Mishra, Deborah Moggach, Muiz, Maath Musleh, Michael Palin, Ed Pavlic, Atef Abu Saif, Kamila Shamsie, Raja Shehadeh, Gillian Slovo, Ahdaf Soueif, Linda Spalding, Will Sutcliffe, Alice Walker With messages from China Achebe, Michael Ondaatje and J. M. Coetzee ________________ 'Every literary act, whether it is a great epic poem or an honest piece of journalism or a simple nonsense tale for children is a blow against the forces of stupidity and ignorance and darkness ... The Palestine Festival of Literature exists to do just that - and I salute it for its work. Not only this year but for as long as it is necessary' - Philip Pullman