Teju Cole Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Berlin Family Lectures Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Teju Cole
Teju Cole is an art historian, writer, and photographer. He’s the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

He was born in the US in 1975 to Nigerian parents, and grew up in Nigeria. His dad was a business executive that exported chocolate while his mom taught French.

The first book Teju read was at the age of 6, it was an abridged version of “Tom Sawyer”. He regularly published cartoons in Prime People, the Nigerian version of Vanity Fair.

“Open City” won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, the Internationaler Literaturpreis. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award.

He is a contributor to Qarrtsiluni, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Atlantic, Aperture, A Public Space, Transition, as well as several other magazines. Teju is a contributing editor at the New Inquiry.

His photography has been exhibited in the US and India, and has been published in numerous journals.

“Open City” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2011. Along the Manhattan streets, this young Nigerian doctor working on his residency wanders around aimlessly. The walks meet a need for Julius: they provide a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of his work, and give him a chance to process his relationships, with his recent breakup with his girlfriend, as well as his past and his present. Even though he’s navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces doesn’t do anything to assuage his feelings of isolation.

However it’s not only a physical landscape that he is covering, he crisscrosses social territory, too, encountering folks from different classes and cultures that’ll provide some insight on his journey. This takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria from his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.

This is a haunting novel about race, national identity, liberty, dislocation, loss, and surrender, and seethes with intelligence. It’s written in a rhythmic, clear, voice which lingers, this book is a profound and mature work by an important author that has a lot to say about our world and our country.

Teju delivers a crystalline, gorgeous, and cumulative investigation of identity, memory, and erasure. Here is a novel to truly treasure and savor. It gathers together its power inexorably, one page at a time, and ultimately reveals itself as nothing less than a searing tour de force. Teju may just be a W. G. Sebald for the 21st century.

“Every Day Is For the Thief” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2014. 15 years is a long time to be away from home. Feels even longer since he left under a cloud.

One young Nigerian living in New York City returns home to Lagos just for a short visit, finding a city that is both strange and familiar. In a city that’s dense with story, this unnamed narrator moves through a mosaic of life, hoping to find some inspiration for his own. He witnesses the “yahoo yahoo” diligently perpetrating email frauds from the Internet cafe, longs after this mysterious woman that reads on a public bus that disembarks before vanishing into a bookless crowd, and recalls the tragic fate of this 11 year old boy that was accused of stealing at the local market.

The man reconnects with old friends, one ex-girlfriend, and extended family along the way, tapping into the energies of Lagos life (ambiguous, creative, and malevolent), and slowly starts reconciling the profound changes which have taken place in his country and the full truth about himself.

In precise and spare prose which sees humanity everywhere, interwoven with original pictures by the author, this is a totally original piece of fiction. You’ve never read a book quite like this since nobody else writes quite like Teju Cole.

This is for readers of Michael Ondaatje and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and is a totally original work of fiction by Teju.

It was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Root, The Telegraph, Dwight Garner, The New York Times. It was a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and Teju was named as one of the most influential Africans of the Year by New African Magazine.

This is a luminous rumination on place and storytelling, return and exile. Teju is following in the footsteps of writerly walkers who, in the tradition of Baudelaire, work their way through urban spaces while on foot and take their time doing so. Like other writers, Teju adds to the literature in his own zeitgeisty fashion.

“Tremor” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2023. Life’s hopeless yet it’s not serious. We have to have danced while we were able and later on, danced again during the telling.

Tunde, who is at the center of this novel, reflects on the times and places of his life, from his upbringing in West Africa to his current work as a teacher of photography on this renowned New England campus. He’s a listener, reader, and a traveler drawn to all sorts of stories: from the epic to history; of family, friends, and strangers; and those that are found in movies and books. One man’s personal lens refracts a whole worlds, and back again.

One weekend spent shopping for antiques gets shadowed by the colonial atrocities which occurred on that same land. One loving marriage gets riven with mysterious tensions. One walk at dusk gets interrupted by some casual racism. And this remarkable cascade of voices speak out from their pulsing metropolis.

“Tremor” is a stunning work of invention and realism which examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It’s a reckoning with human survival amid history’s own brutality, which seldom consoles and refuses symmetries, yet it’s also a testament to the possibility of joy. It’s a narration with all senses alert, a deeply essential and surprising work from a beacon of contemporary literature.