Search results for ""author teju cole""

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.

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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 i

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“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.”

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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.

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'Extraordinary.' SUNDAY TIMES'Dazzling.' DEBORAH LEVY'Masterful.' DAILY TELEGRAPHTunde, 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: tales from history and the epic; accounts of friends, family and strangers; narratives 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 speaks 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.'An intimate novel about destabilization and catastrophe, Tremor roves freely across time, form, geography. Supple and sinuous, it is a dazzling performance from one of the most brilliant and singular minds at work today.' KATIE KITAMURA

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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.

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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.”

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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

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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.

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Bringing together a sequence of disquieting photographs with a dozen original short stories, Pharmakon is a surprising new work from the singular mind of Teju Cole (Open City, Fernweh, Tremor).

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Shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayA 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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Keïta, 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.

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*Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2019* 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.

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