Recommendations
Books Like Open City by Teju Cole
Sebaldian walking meditation in New York
If you were absorbed by Cole's accumulation of history and consciousness — Julius walking through New York and Brussels, the African burial ground beneath the financial district, the sediment of suffering beneath urban surfaces — these books offer comparable depth in literary walking fiction, the diaspora novel, and the African-American literary tradition.
- 1
Buy on AmazonEvery Day Is for the Thief
by Teju Cole
Cole's earlier novella — a narrator returns to Lagos after years in New York; the companion to Open City in its account of the diasporic consciousness encountering its country of origin.
- 2Buy on Amazon
The Rings of Saturn
by W.G. Sebald
Sebald's walking meditation through Suffolk — the formal model for Open City; the same association of walking, memory, history, and the sediment of past suffering in contemporary landscapes.
- 3Buy on Amazon
Austerlitz
by W.G. Sebald
Sebald's novel of architectural memory — the second major Sebald influence on Open City; the trauma embedded in buildings and cities and gradually uncovered.
- 4
Buy on AmazonAmericanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie's Nigerian-American diaspora novel — the contemporary companion to Open City; the same diaspora experience in a more accessible social realist mode.
- 5
Buy on AmazonInvisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
Ellison's Black American classic — the American racial consciousness that Julius is navigating as an African; the canonical American text Cole's African perspective is in dialogue with.
- 6
Buy on AmazonNetherland
by Joseph O'Neill
O'Neill's post-9/11 New York novel — the contemporary literary New York walking novel that Open City is in conversation with; similar themes of belonging and dislocation in the same city.
- 7
Buy on AmazonThe Stranger
by Albert Camus
Camus's existentialist novel — the emotional register of Julius's narration; a first-person narrator who observes the world with an unsettling flatness.
- 8
Buy on AmazonKnown and Strange Things
by Teju Cole
Cole's essay collection — the prose-essay mode of Open City applied to photography, music, and contemporary art; the analytical intelligence behind the novel's fictional surface.
More Open City by Teju Cole Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.