Preface. -- Section I. Reading things: Black body -- Natives on the boat -- Housing Mr. Biswas -- Tomas Tranströmer -- Poetry of the disregarded -- Always returning -- A better quality of agony -- Derek Walcott -- Aciman's alibis -- Double negative -- In place of thought -- A conversation with Aleksandar Hemon. -- Section II. Seeing things: Unnamed lake -- Wangechi Mutu -- Age, actually -- An African Caesar -- Peter Sculthorpe -- Red shift -- John Berger -- Portrait of a lady -- Object lesson -- Saul Leiter -- A true picture of black skin -- Gueorgui Pinkhassov -- Perfect and unrehearsed -- Disappearing Shanghai -- Touching strangers -- Finders keepers -- Google's macchia -- The atlas of affect -- Memories of things unseen -- Death in the browser tab -- The unquiet sky -- Against neutrality. -- Section III. Being there: Far away from here -- Home strange home -- The reprint -- A reader's war -- Madmen and specialists -- What it is -- Kofi Awoonor -- Captivity -- In Alabama -- Bad laws -- Brazilian earth -- Angels in winter -- Shadows in São Paulo -- Two weeks -- The island -- Reconciliation -- Break it down -- The white savior industrial complex -- "Perplexed ... perplexed" -- A piece of the wall. -- Section IV. Epilogue: Blind spot. -- Acknowledgments.