Writing in his deeply meditative and personal voice, Teju Cole suspends Every Day Is for the Thief, his second novel, between infatuation and contempt. Many years after his emigration to the United States, the narrator returns to Lagos, Nigeria. What he discovers there shatters any remaining nostalgic ache he has held for that place, transforming his relationship to the notion of home.
Much like Open City, Cole's debut, Every Day Is for the Thief meanders through streets, erecting a labyrinthine overlay to the city, mapping out its history, culture, secrets and assets. But if his first novel was a profound meditation on cities as cultural structures, Every Day expertly considers money as a social construct, how corruption breeds corruption until all that remains is complacency. Financial prosperity is on every mind and behind every pulpit, while extortion greases the all-too-ubiquitous conniving palm. Surety transfers as unexpectedly, and often with as much threat of violence, as a bout with malaria.
Cole's fiction is a magnificent vehicle, employed to examine systemic corrosion as well as subtle relational shifts. His narrator negotiates gratuities with the same contemplative reserve he offers the friends and family he left in Lagos. In this worthy second novel, it's complicated to be an expatriate. Home, after all, carries with it a peculiar exchange rate. --Dave Wheeler, publishing assistant, Shelf Awareness.