![]() In Lagos, however, he feels like a stranger living abroad has changed him, perhaps irrevocably. He keeps returning to the uncertain space between his Nigerian past and American present, hoping to find himself there. ![]() Yet the place you belong is not always the place you call home, a thought that anchors the narrator’s meandering thoughts as he reacquaints himself with the city he left behind. A life in America and England “like a prince in exile” has spoiled him with “the assumptions of life in a Western democracy.” Nigeria, in comparison, is “a hostile environment for the life of the mind.” At first, the question of where he belongs hardly seems to warrant consideration. Much like the narrator in Open City, he’s developed into an erudite sophisticate in the West, a lover of Coltrane and Ondaatje whose thoughts move freely from Marx to Chekhov to Beckett. Young thugs known as “area boys” threaten their potential victims: “You have become wealthy and we must become wealthy too.” A child accused of theft is publicly burned alive in a marketplace, and Christian pastors drive Rolls Royces and own Learjets, insisting, “His true followers can be neither poor nor wretched.” The narrator reacts with outrage and disappointment, and then with weary acceptance. He finds the streets papered with anti-corruption billboards as policemen extract “small gifts” from passing drivers. In a series of vignettes, interspersed with Cole’s own melancholy photographs of the city, the narrator walks the reader through his reencounters with the venality and violence that permeate local daily life there, expressing his constant disappointment and wondering-doubting-whether he could ever return. ![]() The unnamed narrator in Teju Cole’s Every Day is for the Thief (technically his first book, as it was published in Nigeria before the Hemingway/PEN Award-winning Open City was released in America in 2011), who returns home to Lagos for the first time after fifteen years abroad, has a hard time believing it. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.“Every day is for the thief,” goes the Yoruba proverb, “but one day is for the owner.” Most often used to refer to embezzling politicians, it espouses the belief that you can lie, cheat, and steal, but no matter how long you get away with it, you will, someday, be caught. The Android robot is reproduced or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License. Microsoft and the Window logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. Alexa and all related logos are trademarks of, Inc. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. Android, Google Chrome, Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google, LLC. Firefox is a trademark of Mozilla Foundation. or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. NortonLifeLock, the NortonLifeLock Logo, the Checkmark Logo, Norton, LifeLock, and the LockMan Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of NortonLifeLock Inc. LifeLock identity theft protection is not available in all countries.Ĭopyright © 2023 NortonLifeLock Inc. The LifeLock Brand is part of NortonLifeLock Inc.
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