Shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, this blazingly intelligent first collection of essays from the award-winning author of "Open City" and "Every Day Is for the Thief" solidifies Teju Cole's place as one of today's most powerful and original voices. With pieces on politics, photography, travel, history, and literature, he covers 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" offers 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.