Quote
"And again, the empty space that was, I now saw and admitted, the obvious: the ruins of the World Trade Center. The place had become a metonym of its disaster."
T
Teju Cole"Hey, hey young guy, why trouble yourself? Theyll take your money anyway, and theyll punish you by delaying your passport. Is that what you want? Arent you more interested in getting your passport than trying to prove a point?"
Teju Cole is a Nigerian American writer, photographer, and art historian. He is the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief (2007); a novel, Open City (2011); an essay collection, Known and Strange Things (2016); a photobook, Punto d'Ombra (2016); and a second novel, Tremor (2023). Critics have praised his work as having "opened a new path in African literature."
"And again, the empty space that was, I now saw and admitted, the obvious: the ruins of the World Trade Center. The place had become a metonym of its disaster."
"thousands of cars over the course of a day would pay toll at the informal rate, lining the pockets of the collectors and their superiors"
"the moment there is a power cut"
"Precisely because everyone takes a shortcut, nothing works and, for this reason, the only way to get anything done is to take another shortcut.”"
"Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, rises out of the Sahel like a modernist apparition. The avenues are clean and broad and the government buildings are imposing, with that soulless, vaguely fascistic air common to all capitals cities of the world…"
"Policemen routinely stop drivers of commercial vehicles at this spot to demand bribe"