Chaos! Destruction! Superwoman!

There are wisps of dead wattle tree leaves on the floor. A pile of clean but unironed laundry in a basket. Crumbs on the kitchen bench. The glass-topped table is covered with papers, paper clips, receipts that I go to throw out and then think I'd better keep for a while longer, keys, mobile phones, bananas. Books on shelves are dusty, silverfish wait in the folds. Venetian blinds turn darker with the dust of time. I don't turn my head to look at the garden because I know I will see weeds blooming with unrelenting force, creeping into vegetable beds to throttle the struggling bean and the valiant tomato. I close my eyes to banish it all, only, of course, to see the real chaos booming within.

Review of Open City by Teju Cole

On reaching a scene near the end of Teju Cole’s novel I had to reassess what I thought I knew about the narrator Julius, a young psychiatrist of Nigerian and German background. He has an encounter with a friend who tells him something startling and disturbing, to both him and the reader. It was on the second reading of this absorbing and satisfying novel, with this scene in mind, that I began to see his central character a little better, and to understand the multiple layers of meaning and the myriad interplays between identity, literature, culture, race, suffering, and death. It is one of those books that contains worlds.

Continued at Transnational Literature.