BookDragon Books for the Diverse Reader

Every Day Is for the Thief by Teju Cole [in Booklist]

“I wake up late the morning I’m meant to go to the consulate,” Teju Cole’s spare novel opens. As if in mid-confession, Peter Jay Fernandez’s tone is immediately familiar. In mere seconds, he’s drawing audiences into his confidence, sharing experiences, disclosing comments, and divulging secrets as Cole’s unnamed first-person protagonist returns to Lagos after 13 years away.

The ‘thief’ in Cole’s title remains ubiquitous throughout, exposed in every disguise regardless of where the narrator goes, beginning in Manhattan’s Nigerian consulate, where the clerk expects cumbersome money orders – never cash – to produce the necessary travel documents. Arriving in Lagos, Fernandez chummily escorts the protagonist as he visits relatives and friends, observing a “home” he barely recognizes. From his airport landing to his departing flight, corruption looms, demanding constant tips and bribes that make daily life possible. And still, he considers moving back: “Each time I am sure … I have inadvertently wandered into a region of hell, something else emerges to give me hope. A reader, an orchestra, the friendship of some powerful swimmers against the tide.”

Fernandez affectingly breathes new life to Cole’s homage to art, memory, and tenuous connections, which was originally published in 2007.

Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, March 26, 2021

Readers: Adult

Published: 2007, 2020

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