The short story "Modern Girls" is by the Nigerian writer Teju Cole and is set in a girls's school in Nigeria in the early 1970s.
After hearing it read on public radio's Selected Shorts in September 2015, I included his name among the writers I should read.
But it wasn't until a little more than six months ago, after leaving my ophthalmologist's office, that it was my good fortune to find, on top of a garbage bin, a copy of one of his books, Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016). It was the first book of his that I have encountered.
I haven't read it yet. But I intend to. Perhaps I should put it on my summer or fall reading list.
Cole, it should be noted, was a recipient of a United States Artists grant. USA is a nonprofit organization that since 2006, reported Vogue magazine, in 2017, has given "unrestricted grants of $50,000 to individual artists who...use traditional methods and unexpected approaches to speak to a vast range of experience." Cole has also received several awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Known and Strange Things is described on the back cover as "[p]ersuasive and provocative, erudite yet accessible...."
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