Faber snaps up new Cole novel Tremor

Faber has scooped Tremor, the second full-length work of fiction by writer and photographer Teju Cole, to be published on 19th October 2023.

Commissioning editor Emmie Francis acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Tracy Bohan at The Wylie Agency. Penguin Random House will publish in the US.

The synopsis said: “Coursing between an elite American college campus and Nigeria, as well as transformative sojourns in Bamako, Basel, Maui and Paris, Tremor is a monumental work of fiction that explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world. Readers follow Tunde, a photographer and professor, through his experience of music, travel, commitments, grief and premonition.

"A weekend shopping for antiques is overshadowed by colonial atrocities. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing and conflict-ridden metropolis. This is narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature.”

Cole’s first novel, Open City (Faber) featured on numerous book of the year lists, won the PEN/ Hemingway Award and the Internationaler Literaturpreis and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a professor in the English Department at Harvard and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine.

Francis said: "It is an honour to work with Teju and his ideas. Tremor is not a novel merely about one man. It is work of bold formal fireworks and deep humanist thought. As readers will discover in Tremor, ’life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling’."

Early pre-publication support includes an appraisal from Deborah Levy, who said "Teju Cole’s writing always amazes me—its beauty, intimacy, complexity and clarity. Tremor is a quietly dazzling book".