Teju Cole: the Consummate Mahlerian

As part of our education in the music of Gustav Mahler, we spoke  with the Nigerian-American novelist Teju Cole. In his triumphant debut titled Open City in 2011, Teju Cole built his story to a climactic performance of Mahler’s 9^th Symphony in Carnegie Hall.  Teju Cole lives and writes in New York.  He’s a bit of a Mahler obsessive who tweets often about his favorite composer.  I asked him how Mahler enters the mind and the spirit of a young New Yorker who grew up in West Africa.