This book is a collection of essays by Teju Cole, an American writer and photographer. These essays reflect on his experience of being black and living a cosmopolitan lifestyle in an (only sometimes) cosmopolitan world. It’s an analysis of writing, music, conversations, places and images that he loves or that have disturbed him. When Cole considers each of these he translates his responses into a kind of personal archive, that counteracts rootlessness and condenses them into something that has shared meaning.