Abstract This colloquium gives an overview of recent theoretical and experimental progress in the area of nonequilibrium dynamics of strongly interacting quantum systems. Recent interest on this subject has been spurred by a series of groundbreaking experiments in nanostructures and cold atomic gases in optical lattices. After reviewing these experiments I will discuss the theoretical issues they raised in a number of contexts, ranging from the the dynamics of thermalization in systems taken out of equilibrium to the quest of universal features in the nonequilibrium dynamics of correlated quantum systems.