Julius is the somewhat unreliable first-person narrator of Open City. His father—who passed away when he was fourteen—was Nigerian, and his estranged mother is German. His mother, Julianna Miller, chose his name, and “Being Julius in everyday life thus confirmed me in my not being fully Nigerian” (78). As a psychiatry student in his final year of residency, he is very interested in the mind, and much of the novel centers on his mental wanderings and emotions. He repeatedly struggles to suppress his anger. He becomes “angry again” (29) and describes how “anger had welled up within me, unhinging me, the anger of a shattered repose” (41). He also struggles when others express their pain and sorrow. Julius thinks about how he was “embarrassed by the trembling and the emotion” (80) when his mother told him about her traumatic past.

The novel is a character study of Julius, and he characterizes himself as the hero. However, he frequently acknowledges his flawed memory and the skewed self-perception that results. He recalls having saved a boy from drowning in a swimming pool when he was a child and having thus been hailed as the “hero of the day” (196).