A review by marcymurli
Open City by Teju Cole

4.0

I stumbled upon this novel when I read an article about the Kony 2012 scam by its author and happened to find it in a local bookshop a week later. The novel is eloquently narrated with rich descriptions of the narrator Julius' wanderings around New York City, Lagos, and Brussels. The novel is essentially plotless, which I love. Instead of following action, readers are invited into Julius' mind as it shadows the character and his travels. He doesn't merely describe what he sees in front of him, however. And this is what I like so much. He digs beneath the surface and gives readers a sense of the layers of history so we can also glimpse a past contained in the physical space of his present. Equally compelling are the various characters he meets and chats with--either old friends or new acquaintances. But in both contexts Julius remains distant--a distance that mimics the cities in which he finds himself. Because Julius is a deeply intellectual character these conversations are filled with thoughtful debates about European classical music, Orientalism, or literature. One of my favorite conversations in the novel is between Julius and Farouq, a Moroccan man he meets in Brussels in which they debate about the merits of Tahar Ben Jelloun as compared to Mohamed Coukri. Julius' assessment is apt:

"It is always a difficult thing, isn't it? I mean resisting the orientalizing impulse. For those who don't, who will publish them? Which Western publisher wants a Moroccan or Indian writer who isn't into oreintal fantasy? That's what Morocco and India are there for, after all, to be oriental" (104).

The book is beautifully written, and hard to put down.