About Book
A young man returns to Nigeria after fifteen years in New York. Like him, the country of his childhood has grown up quickly: found fast-food restaurants, email cafés, contempt for authority; the all-consuming draw of 'money for nothing'. From the consulate in Manhattan to the dusty streets of Lagos, life in modern Nigeria runs like clockwork, as long as you pay the fee. A bribe for the visa clerk, a 'Christmas gift' at immigration, cash, no receipt at the unofficial tollbooth. Petrol pumps are rigged to overcharge and internet cafés overflow with career scammers('Dear friend'), but the police are too busy doling out bogus fines to care. In a country routinely plundered of its oil and ancient treasures, who is to say who can thieve and who can't?
As our narrator makes the difficult journey back to his family house and its memories, he is confronted by the paradox of a country he wants to love, as burdened by its impoverished past as it is blinded by the spoils of the future. Every Day is for the Thief now published for the first time outside Nigeria is a candid tale of political and spiritual corruption and a moving account of what it means to go home.
About Author
Teju Cole is a novelist, photographer, critic, curator, and the author of six books, which include Open City, Blind Spot, and, most recently, his photobook Fernweh. He was the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine from 2015 until 2019. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard