The polar vortex thrust New York City in a frigid chill this week, weather that Okey Ndibe says reminds him of the first day in the United States twenty-five years earlier. He arrived in December, 1988, on the coldest day of the year wearing only a light jacket. Ndibe came from Nigeria, a place where cold is seventy-five degrees. Nobody warned him about winter.

This month, Okey Ndibe released his second novel, Foreign Gods, Inc, fourteen years after his debut, Arrows of Rain (2000). His publisher, SoHo Press, has sent him around the country to promote the book, and hosted Ndibe at the Jefferson Market Library in the West Village.

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