Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.

The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it.

Being Nigerian is a strong part of my identity. Being American is a strong part of my identity. And there are important parts of who I am that really have nothing to do with my national connection.

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

The site was a palimpsest, as was all the city, written, erased, rewritten.

The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect.

In a sense, Open City is a kind of Wunderkammer, one of those little rooms assembled with bric-a-brac by Renaissance scholars. I don't mean it as a term of praise: these cabinets of curiousities contained specific sorts of objects - maps, skulls (as memento mori), works of art, stuffed animals, natural history samples, and books - and Open City actually contains many of the same sort of objects. So, I don't think it's as simple as literary inclusiveness.