Review: 'Known and Strange Things' by Teju Cole

There are few modern writers as intellectual, unpretentious and genuinely curious as Teju Cole, the Brooklyn-based Nigerian-American author (he’s also the photography critic for The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to The New Yorker), photographer and art historian. With his first collection of nonfiction work, a compilation of more than 50 essays on politics, photography, race, travel, grief, history and literature, he delves into worlds within worlds and in doing so, opens up our own singular existence.

Cole describes it as a book that “favors epiphany,” containing what he has loved, seen and made him feel. These are not essays in the traditional sense of the style: They are free-flowing and genre-defying with unexpected cultural references sprinkled throughout each, from Beyoncé to Rembrandt. Topics include James Baldwin, Instagram (he describes the result of the camera-phone’s filters and features “briefly beguiling to the senses but ultimately annoying to the soul, like fake breasts or MSG-rich food”), Barack Obama, race issues in Brazil, Arizona and immigration, W.G. Sebald and drones, to name a few, while certain one-line observations like, “The music you travel with helps you to create your own internal weather,” have long-term staying power.

Cole’s knowledge is vast but his thirst to learn more is greater, and one should take a cue. Musings with endless and moreover, essential insight, Known and Strange Things is ideal for picking up when you hanker for a fix of digestible educational enlightenment, a little bit of cultural enrichment, or an emotion-inducing reality check—and couldn’t we all use more of all that?

Originally published on PRØHBTD.com