Want to write a breakout first novel? The conventional wisdom says ingratiate yourself (Everything Is Illuminated), grab the reader by the lapels (The Lovely Bones), or put on an antic show (Special Topics in Calamity Physics). Teju Cole’s disquietingly powerful debut Open City does none of the above. It’s light on plot. It’s exquisitely written, but quiet; the sentences don’t call attention to themselves. The narrator, a Nigerian psychiatry student, is emotionally distant, ruminative, and intellectual.