Cole’s second work of fiction maintains the line of his first. (That sentenced can be easily reversed: Every Day Is for the Thief was written some years before Open City, but only just now became available in America.) Here, our narrator returns to Nigeria after fifteen years spent in the States. It is a difficult homecoming: he is both drawn to Lagos and repulsed by it—the heat and corruption rouse a kind of violence in him he’s not wont to encourage. As with Open City, the book is quietly provocative—moments that at first seem banal twist in the light and expose themselves to be something else entirely.