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    Open City
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    Open City
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    Open City
    Audiobook9 hours

    Open City

    Written by Teju Cole

    Narrated by Kevin Mambo

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Acclaimed author Teju Cole’s writing has appeared in numerous journals in Nigeria and the United States. His second novel, Open City is the story of a Nigerian-German psychiatrist making a living in New York City five years after the Twin Towers were destroyed. The tale emerges as a rich and unforgettable meditation of life and culture.

    “The soft, exquisite rhythms of its prose, the display of sensibility, the lucid intelligence, make it a novel to savour and treasure.”—Colm TOibIn
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781449867683
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Open City

    3.5/5

    380 ratings42 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I've ingested 180 pages this weekend and have been struck spellbound. Yes, the influence of Sebald pervades, but the book I am most reminded of is Zone by Mathias Enard.

      It was the NYTBR which brought this seminal work to my attention. It is staggering, it is the deft employment of a inchoate mirror to our fractured lives.
    • 4/5
      Some books have opening lines that are immediately moving for the reader. This is one of those books. This uncommon novel begins with the narrator commenting on on his daily walks: "And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall. . . "While this line may seem unassuming, and the whole book contains vignettes that, taken individually, may seem unassuming, the entirety of this memoir-like narrative is powerful indeed. What is it that makes the individual parts come together in such a fashion that they had such an impact on this reader?There are two parts containing short chapters. In Part One the story follows the main character, Julius, who is a Nigerian doctor doing his psychiatric residency in New York City. Julius takes up walking as a way to diminish the pressures of his job working with his patients. Julius even uses the walks to clear his mind of personal matters, such as a recent breakup with his girlfriend, Nadege. Throughout the novel, the narration of the story does not include any dialogue among the characters, but is told in exposition - in short chapters. He is an observer of humanity and as he walks he shares his experiences in a somewhat random manner. What we learn from this is not just the experiences but his ruminations on history, literature, art, and eventually his own family. He starts to recognize what a true melting pot New York is as far as cultures and ethnicities are concerned. In the face of living in such a diverse city, however, Julius also notices that stark separation that still draws an imaginary line segregating one ethnic group from another.As Julius walks, he also thinks back to his childhood in Nigeria. His father died when Julius was 14. He is now estranged from his mother. while his father was of Nigerian descent, Julius's mother is white and of German descent, making Julius a mixed race. Due to his mixed race, and light colored skin, Julius feels out of place, even in the worlds where he belongs. As he wanders around the city, black people seem to connect with him, recognizing his African roots.One of his run-ins with someone he grew up with in Nigeria even reveals that Julius raped her. Subsequently, Julius blocked out the memory of this event and never reveals if he recalls it when his Moji tells him what he did to her.Near the end of Part One of the novel Julius visits Brussels. He is only just visiting Brussels, but it has a similar impact on him as Manhattan. He is impressed by the feeling of history from the ancient buildings, since Brussels was an "Open City" in WWII and was thus exempt from bombing. But beyond the history and his own internal meditations he feels just as impermanent in Brussels as he had in New York. It was like he being awestruck by it for the first time despite being world-weary restless. He is a perpetual tourist, stopping in his steps to gawk, never in a hurry but always moving somewhere—if not forward or backward, still somewhere.By the end of the novel, Julius finishes his residency and moves into private practice. It seems as if he has come to terms with some of the events in his life. On the other hand, he never fully addresses some of the other issues to reveal to the reader as to whether the issues are ongoing or resolved. The lack of resolution did not diminish the cumulative power of the stories shared by the narrator.Open City is the debut novel by author Teju Cole. the story of narrator Julius’ wandering through New York, and, briefly, Brussels. It gains power and presence through his contemplation of immigration and nationality in the U.S., his fleetingly depicted but often strong friendships, the way we manufacture brotherhood as a way to both unite and distance ourselves from humanity.
    • 4/5
      A timely book written some time ago. Our narrator Julius is superficially alluring - thoughtful, intelligent - but as the book progresses a darker truth emerges of pretension, selfishness, and something even worse. A fine study of toxic masculinity masquerading as ‘nice guy’ness.
    • 4/5
      This is a book of musings, thoughts, many philosophical made by an African-European man living in NYC. It had a rhythm and enough interesting thoughts and analogies to keep me reading but then again, it never went anywhere.
    • 2/5
      The writing in this book is beautiful, and I can see glimpses of the author's other talents in how he views the world. I really struggled to finish this book, though. I kept waiting for a plot that wasn't really there, or some character to latch on to.
    • 4/5
      Open City is part diary, part love letter to NYC, part history lesson and for me very unsettling. Julius is a Nigerian immigrant born of a Nigerian father and German mother. He is a psychiatrist who seems both profoundly connected and apart from the the city and his life. Through his walks and musings you begin to form a picture of a young man who is thoughtful, well studied, a lover of music and art. However, there is a dispassion about him. Something that feels broken or missing. He never tells us why he has a broken relationship with his German grandmother and when he goes to Brussels ostensibly to reconnect that never happens. He is also accused of something late in the book that he never offers and explanation for or an apology. While many reviewers saw something deep in the story, I found it sadly empty. While Teju Cole's language is almost poetic and through Julius' walks around the city he connects the reader to literature, art, music, history, politics and the struggle of immigrants the book lacked a human connection for me. It lacked an explanation.
    • 2/5
      I tried to read it and liked the beginning, but then I felt lost... what was the story, why so repetitive, no meaning, descriptive but without reason. It was impossible for me to relate to the situations, the feelings, and the senses described in the book; like it described a human robot, not a human. Like meandering thoughts where half of them are repetetive and random. That said, it is well-written with some gorgeous parts in the text. I am sure some people love this book, but I couldn't read more than half, and I wanted to love it. Readers are just different, I guess, it wasn't my thing.
    • 3/5
      Still thinking about this one... Photographic. Encounters feel like psychiatric observations with little focus on internal. Surprise at end when confronted by Moji... did it happen or not...
    • 2/5
      I found it to be well-written, but struggled the whole way through. Maybe the style/genre isn't for me.
    • 1/5
      I really enjoyed the first 90% of this book, and if I could review it on that alone, I would have given it four stars. But the rape plot twist towards the end poisoned the whole rest of the book for me.

      It's not that I'm especially anti-plot-twists - but this particular plot twist made me feel as though I had been betrayed. And if that was Cole's intention, as I think it must have been, I think that's a gross thing to do on purpose to your readers.

      I don't recommend this book.
    • 3/5
      Another unique character I've stumbled on lately - a psychiatrist from Nigeria, living in NYC post-9/11.  I find it so sad Julius feels so isolated -- "isolation" seems to have another meaning because he lives in NYC and while wandering around the city he often runs into friends and visits other friends.  This even seems to be the plot of the book.  It must be heartbreaking to be a psychiatrist who feels so isolated.  I thought it was interesting that Coetzee's book 'Elizabeth Costello' was mentioned a couple times.  Unlike 'Elizabeth Costello' which focuses on telling the story through many public speaking events, this book is very internal, when Julius isn't speaking with other people one on one.  No matter the situation, he feels isolated.  Even when he recalls successfully saving a drowning boy when he was a child, the most memorable part for him is "the sensation of being all alone in the water" as he is swimming towards the boy.  There is much that Julius is avoiding.  I hesitate to even call him an unreliable narrator, as he might not even know he is being unreliable.  Julius has many tangents while wandering around NYC and Brussels.   I do like meandering novels, but the pieces don't seem to fit for me here. There are some memorable images, especially of birds.  With many NYC streets constantly being mentioned, and me not knowing them, my attention was probably drifting.  But maybe that is what Julius is doing to the reader, trying to distract the reader and even himself with misdirects.  I can appreciate a meandering novel if most sentences are phenomenal on their own, Walker Percy's 'The Moviegoer' comes to mind.  This book reminded me of Walker Percy's excellent 'The Moviegoer' so much, that I revisited the underlined sentences.  Flipping through The Moviegoer again, I notice a part in a cemetery looking like a city.  In Open City, as Julius is flying above NYC, the city looks like a giant graveyard.  Not sure if this is a coincidence or if Cole is a fan of Walker.  But Julius remains mysterious and isolated from even the reader.  I can see Cole's purpose for writing this way, but I'm not sure if that makes for an effective narrative. As Julius was so distant, I was distant from the book.  
    • 3/5
      Open City is stream-of-consciousness style novel that follows a Nigerian man who is in New York for a psychiatry residency. The parts where he wanders the city are good, but apart from that I had a hard time following his train of thought. It may have been my reading mood as I’ve liked other stream-of-consciousness books.
    • 4/5
      3.5 stars. Sophisticate walks around NYC with side visits to Nigeria and Belgium, meditating eruditely on his surroundings. Reminiscent of Netherland but with less invention, action, and/or characterization.
    • 3/5
      That Cole is a photographer as well as a writer is not coincidental. For the protagonist of Open City, the Nigerian-German immigrant psychiatry resident in NYC post 9/11 is for all practical purposes a disengaged roving eye. Quite ironic that he is reading Barthe's Camera Lucida early on as Barthe's passionate relationship to a photograph of his deceased mother might be the polar opposite of Julius's relationship to the mental "photos" he takes as he strolls the streets of NY and Brussels. Out of curiosity, I visited the author's webpage & took a look at quite a few of his "real life" black and white "street" photographs. Gorgeously composed & wonderfully observant. Much like his novel, with one crucial exception. The author's photographs are infused with an empathy that I found largely lacking in his novel. In fact, Julius's most outstanding characteristic is his disengagement from all that he observes. He is perhaps only "with passion" when listening to European classical music (he has no taste for American Jazz)& Northern European painting. He remains always at arm's length, even from his own mugging by 3 young men late in the book. The mood of the novel isn't so much one of generative solitude as one of isolation. The mind may be thrilled but the heart never quickens. I am surprised that not even one of the reviews that I read on Goodreads alludes to a scene late in the novel that takes place at a party given by the wealthy white boyfriend of Moji, the older sister of one of Julius's school friends in Nigeria. Julius runs into Moji by chance while walking in the City. She recognizes him, but he doesn't recognize her. Throughout the novel he pursues an off again on again sort of friendship with her, although he only feels motivated to "flirt" with her when being entertained by her boyfriend. The accusation that Moji makes to him about his having "forced" her to have sex with him at a party back when they were teenagers drops like a bomb into the still waters of the novel, but there is no ripple effect. It doesn't change Julius, nor turn the novel in any direction other than that in which it is already headed. Julius prefaces their one-sided confrontation by remarking that psychiatric patients are unreliable narrators. But who exactly is the unreliable narrator here, Moji or Julius? Impossible to discern, since Julius neither admits culpability nor speaks in his own defense, other than to note that when he looks in the mirror, all told, his accounting of himself to himself falls more to the good side than to the bad. There is a central mystery in this novel, one that haunts Julius & which he never illuminates, which is his estranged relationship (non-relationship in fact) with his German-born mother. He never tells us why he has broken with her. Is it merely because she is the source of his hybridity, the one who keeps him from having specificity in his own eyes (in America he is simply a black man; although in NYC that comes with some nuance)? We don't know, because Julius doesn't tell us & he remains throughout our only source of information. Moji at one point asks him about his mother, saying she always liked her. So, the told story of Moji & Julius becomes linked to the untold story of Julius & his mother. (Perhaps there is more resonance with Barthes than I first thought, since for Barthes, it was always all about his mother).
    • 4/5
      Sort of shapeless, but lots of great, beautifully written passages. No plot at all, really, and no ending to speak of -- the book just stops. (I was reading it on the Kindle and really didn't realize how close I was to the ending; I expected another chapter!)
    • 4/5
      I listened to the audible version of this book, narrated by Kevin Mambo. Mambo's voice was perfect match for Cole's beautiful, soothing prose. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way I lost the purpose or the direction of the story and I am not sure if I missed something or if it in fact lacks direction. I am rating it 4 stars until I get the chance to actually read the story myself.
    • 5/5
      Usually if the term "stream of consciousness" is in a review, I run the opposite direction. Just because so many reviewers told of the huge part New York City played in this novel, I decided to give it a chance. I was not disappointed. With almost no plot, the novel is played out in the mind of Julius as he roams New York and later Brussels. There are two reasons I found this novel so fascinating.First, the author does an excellent job of laying the events on top of the history of the place. He refers to the World Trade Center ruins as a "palimpsest." I had to look up the word, (refers to parchment used again after earlier writings have been erased) but what an excellent way to describe our current world built upon all the ruins of the past. "There had been communities here before Columbus ever set sail, before Verranzano anchored his ships in the narrows, or the black Portuguese slave trader Esteban Gomez sailed up the Hudson....and I, one of the still legible crowd, entered the subway. I wanted to find the line that connected me to my own part in these stories." I loved that connection the author draws between not only Julius but other characters with the historical or global. Along this same line, the reference to the demise of Tower Records. "I was touched not only at the passage of these fixtures in my mental landscape but also at the swiftness and dispassion with which the market swallowed even the most resilient enterprises."Secondly, this is really a book about connections. Some reviewers have referred to Julius as detached and making no connections; I see it just the opposite, he makes the connections, but without all the mental hand-wringing and angst found in so many modern novels. The author aptly demonstrates that extremely superficial connections are often highly overrated and that other deep connections have almost no basis. Because Julius is be-racial, he is often immediately referred to as "brother". The cab driver assumes he is a "brother", Saidu immediately asks if he is African, Farouq calls him "brother. The incident with the muggers is another example of a connection that really isn't even there. "There had earlier been, it occurred to men, on the most tenuous of connections between us, looks on a street corner by strangers, a gesture of mutual respect based on our being young, black, male; based, in other words, on our being 'brothers...a way of saying, I know something of what life is like for you out here." Calling someone a brother implies an understanding, a connection, but it takes more than outward appearance to make one a true brother.On the other hand some connections are so strong yet based on so little. Julius' rememberence and tenderness of his Oma is based on treasuring her hand quietly kneading his shoulder when he was young. His interactions with Professor Saito were "cherished highlights." Even the story told by a minor character demonstrates how one-sided connections can be; what is important to one, is hardly noticeable by the other. The bootblack says of his past employer, "The loss of Mr. Berard was like the loss of my own brother. He wouldn't put it that way, of course."Just like a palimpsest, there are many layers to this novel. It is one that is worth re-reading. In addition to what I have pointed out, there is food for thought about racism, religion, and cultural clashes. All this, but without all the "oh, poor me". Some may dislike the fact that Julius is so unemotional, but I believe he is just someone who realizes he is not the center of the universe. Interesting, intelligent, and thought-provoking.
    • 4/5
      A slow burn. Almost put it down early on but his rhythm and reflections draw you in.
    • 4/5
      Another first reads book (Thank you Goodreads and Random House!)
      Much has been said here, and I need not repeat. Language that Cole utilizes is poetic, though not as much as, say, Winterson's. The narrator is an intellectual and the language perfectly delivers the desired effect. What's interesting is that no matter what it sounds exactly like a Nigerian intellectual immigrant would sound at times; all the right words and high concepts are there, but there is a certain way of saying things that points to the continent. This makes the narrative voice very believable and effective.

      There is a lot of contemplation, silent walks littered with historical facts about New York City, Nigeria, Lagos, slavery, colonization, language, film, literature, music, music, music... There are many things unexplained or half-baked, and there are no apologies for any of it.

      I enjoyed reading the book. The confrontation towards the end and the lack of engagement from the point of view of the narrator was interesting, but I am not sure if I liked it or if I would prefer some sort of reaction, analysis, catharsis.
    • 4/5
      Julius, the narrator and protagonist of Teju Cole’s debut novel, is a psychiatrist doing his residency at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital. He lives a solitary life that consists of long work rotations, and long walks through nearby parks and onward to locales in mid-town and lower Manhattan. He travels infrequently and when he does he puts together all of his vacation time in order to spend a number of weeks in Brussels in rainy mid-winter. Julius is, perhaps surprisingly, well-read — he has a long-standing friendship with his aged former English professor from his university days — and he is a deep and subtle appreciator of classical music and art. In a country of immigrants, it is not surprising to learn that Julius is also an immigrant. He spent his formative years in Nigeria, the privileged only child of a mixed race couple. His widowed mother, from whom he is estranged, was originally from Germany. And it is those roots that he is chasing during his Belgian holiday, since he believes that his mother’s mother (the two are also estranged) has moved to Brussels. Time passes. Julius meets some new people and encounters a few people from his past. He reflects upon literature and art and music and, more rarely, the fundaments of psychiatry. And then the novel ends, without comment or cause or resolution (if there were in fact anything there to be resolved). The effect is rather like reading a single volume of a multi-volume diary. Which rather heightens the challenge that Cole lays down for his anti-narrativist narrative.The writing here is lean and unemotional. Cole’s narrator describes his day, his walks, some of the sites in New York, his engagement with certain novels and certain composers, and yet the reader never feels as though they are penetrating beyond the burnished exterior of this character. It is as though he, either deliberately or unintentionally, is holding us at bay. It is a style often associated with W.G. Sebald, but it might also be seen latterly in Joseph O’Neill. Cole’s mastery of this technique is remarkable, for a first novel. It has the advantage of facilitating abstruse discussion of art and politics and race and history. All of which makes this novel both a challenging and an intriguing encounter. But such a distancing technique can also limit understanding even as it suppresses emotional engagement.What do we really learn of Julius? Is he a trustworthy narrator? Do we gain any insight into his Nigerian background? What about the surely compelling story of his mother? What about that grandmother whom he only vaguely attempts to trace in Brussels? In some ways this is a frustrating novel, even if that frustration is both compelled and compelling. So I find myself uncertain, finally, about what to say about Open City. Yet, I have no hesitation in recommending it, if only because you will want to be sure to read everything that this young novelist eventually writes.
    • 3/5
      I would have liked this book if it did not include the revelation from Moji. After that point, the protagonist loses any appeal he may have had for me as a human being, not necessarily because of what he did (or may have done?) but because of his lack of reaction or empathy. To me this does not seem human, and I am left wondering whether he is a sociopath, or whether the whole story is a delusion from someone in a straitjacket (the ultimate unreliable narrator?). After that scene, the book changes from a beautifully written meditation, to a psychiatric mystery -- without enough clues to solve it. That said, I do think the book was worth my time for the insight it provides into the mind of someone who is mentally disturbed and doesn’t realize it. Julius reminds me of someone I once knew, and his story is giving me a whole new creepy insight that I wish I didn’t have, but that might be useful as a warning or caution.
    • 4/5
      This book is a meditation on urban living and the happenstance of running into people – people who often provide food for thought. The geography of Manhattan and Brussels (and their inhabitants) seem to be a metaphor for the author’s interior philosophical rambling. A transplant from Africa, the narrator also gives us insight into many things that we take for granted. Overall the book resembles the pacing of the quiet and then blaring symphonies which the young psychiatrist is fond of listening to in his spare time.
    • 4/5
      An odd, compelling read. On the face of it, this is the diary of someone who walks around New York a lot, has some moderately interesting friends and very small adventures, but is worth reading because he himself is interesting and erudite and loves making connections between things. In other words, it's a lot like reading Cole's nonfiction, and for a lot of the book I couldn't shake the feeling that the narrator was just the author's mouthpiece. Which is alright--after all it was Cole's nonfiction that got me interested in reading his novel in the first place--but if that were all there was to it I don't think it would have held my attention over 200 pages.

      What made this book special for me was its distillation of a very particular feeling: that of having a lovely time going about my business, while always conscious of the horror of the world around me. I do see this in Cole's nonfiction, but there's something about letting it ebb and flow through a much longer, more rambling work than allows it get much more powerful, and in the last few chapters it becomes completely crushing.
    • 3/5
      Hm. It wanders and rambles, and sometimes I like the wanderings and rambles and sometimes I didn't enjoy them. There's a lot of subterranean stuff going on--some I caught on to, some I didn't. Probably a great book to write a paper on! Plot---mmm...I would say there is one, but I wouldn't say that I was satisfied by it. The author is writing another book about Nigeria--I do know that I will be looking out for it.
    • 4/5
      Totally prepared to give this book a certain review, then a part toward the end totally threw me. Or maybe a certain chapter remained so unresolved, not unlike the rest of the book, but this part had a different aftertaste, made me re-look.

      A totally solitary, meandering, searching book. Not sure what else I've read that is like this, but certain parts of life are certainly like this book.
    • 3/5
      This is a quick read w/ generally nice prose. I really hated the ending though- it seemed totally forced and pointless.
    • 4/5
      A slow floating reminiscence, flowing from topic to topic, from conversation to history to meditation.
    • 4/5
      This critically acclaimed debut novel has no plot to propel it forward, just the ruminations of the solitary and possibly unreliable narrator – a young Nigerian-born psychiatrist – on identity, art, literature, music, death and more as he wanders the streets of Manhattan and has occasional interactions with friends and strangers, most of them immigrants like himself. Beautiful prose, with crystalline descriptions of the city and crisp sketches of people. Surprisingly compelling.
    • 3/5
      Ever have one of those reading experiences where you fall in love with the first chapter but become gradually disappointed as the novel progresses?I thought I'd found another Ward Just. (Again, if you aren't familiar with Just, go read something of his RIGHT NOW. I mean it. Go. This review isn't going to be life-changing or anything. It can wait.)For both authors, the urban setting is as essential to the novel as the characters in it: Exiles in the Garden could only be set in D.C., and Open City could only be written about New York. And both authors create richly-layered characters, without pointing out each quality like a paint-by-number. I appreciate that. And neither is afraid to write a book where not much happens. Where Cole disappoints is that he takes the not-much-happens approach, while alluding to Significant Stuff that Happened. I had to re-read a chapter because I thought I'd missed something major. Nope. This happened more than once. I won't go into details, because I am lazy and spoiler-averse, but you'll know them when you read them.Also, Cole has the odd habit of inserting historical anecdotes into the narrative, seemingly at random. For example, there were several pages about 17th century whale beachings in the Netherlands. This comes after our main character, Julius, walks past Trinity Church and starts thinking about a former parishoner, Herman Melville, and New York being formerly New Amsterdam. We also have very long passages where Julius listens to music and looks at paintings, especially Flemish ones (Cole himself happens to be a professional historian of early Netherlandish art, according to the bio on the dust jacket).Don't get me wrong, there was also plenty of beautiful language, and a lot to think about in terms of relationships, solitude, and the unreliability of memory. I'll leave you with this excerpt, as Julius finds himself on a rooftop, clutching a railing and looking at the night sky (the ellipses are mine): "Stars! I hadn't thought I would be able to see them, not with the light pollution permanently wreathing the city.... The miasma of Manhattan's electric lights did not go very far up into the sky, and in the moonless night, the sky was like a roof shot through with light, and heaven itself shimmered. Wonderful stars, a distant cloud of fireflies: but I felt in my body what my eyes could not grasp, which was that their true nature was the persisting visual echo of something that was already in the past. In the unfathomable ages it took for light to cross such distances, the light source itself had in some cases been long extinguished, its dark remains stretched away from us at ever greater speeds.... My hands held metal, my eyes starlight, and it was as though I had come so close to something that it had fallen out of focus, or fallen so far away from it that it had faded away."
    • 3/5
      Knew it was a slow read, but in the end it feels like unfinished business - the relationships with his parents, especially mother, and the girlfriend who took off. Nothing seems to replace it, though, certainly not the city. And Belgium? WTF? Although I liked the Belgium section best. Professor Saito and Mme. in Belgium.