Wallowing in misery: Tremor, by Teju Cole, reviewed

The protagonist of Teju Cole’s latest novel is a composite of his earlier creations, which in their turn are partial self-portraits. An artist roaming around with his camera, Tunde photographs hedges and trinkets, contemplates colour and listens to Malian music. Having left his native Nigeria three decades earlier, aged 17, by 2020 he is settled in New England. Meanwhile, Lagos has become ‘a reality of his life so large and at the same time so intimate, so intense and so various’, a feeling that increases whenever he returns to the city in person or in his imagination.

The narrative moves between the first and third person, now presenting Tunde’s point of view, now sketching out a vignette. A much-missed friend is occasionally evoked: ‘You’d been dead three years and he had never lost anyone that close to him before.’