Shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay A blazingly intelligent first collection of essays from the award-winning author of Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief. With these pieces on politics, photography, travel, history and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of today's most powerful and original voices, covering subjects as diverse as Virginia Woolf, W.G Sebald, Instagram, Barack Obama and Boko Haram. Persuasive and provocative, erudite yet accessible, Known and Strange Things is an opportunity to live within Teju Cole's wide-ranging enthusiasms, curiosities and passions, and a chance to see the world in surprising and affecting new frames.