| Intellectual agility … Teju Cole. Photograph: Kayana Szymczak |
Cole’s third novel packs in centuries of artworks and continents of human experiences, in a dazzling reflection on colonialism, aesthetics and contemporary life
Kit Fan
Friday 20 October 2023
A
s our understanding of history changes, how do we re-evaluate, interact with and enjoy art? How do we create new art that remembers but is unburdened by the past? These aesthetic questions quiver at the heart of Teju Cole’s mesmerising third novel, a feat of narrative invention about literature, painting, music, photography, race, the passage of time and human survival amid “history’s own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles”.