A review by alundeberg
The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith

3.0

Combine the everyman of Eric Ambler and the existentialism of Albert Camus and you get Howard Ingham, the protagonist of Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery. Ingham's world is turned topsy-turvy when he is sent to Tunisia to write a screenplay for a director and then learns the director committed suicide, his girlfriend made questionable choice, and that the Arab world that he now inhabits lives by a distinctly different moral code. It all comes to a head one momentous night that forces Ingham to examine his own morality. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and a war in which Israel bombs its Arab neighbors, Highsmith renders all versions of "morality" fair game: what good are Western virtues when they try to bomb others into democracy? The longer Ingham stays in Tunisia, the more he wonders who he is: "Who am I, anyway? Does one exist, or to what extent does one exist as an individual without friends, family, anybody to whom one can relate, to whom one's existence is of the least importance?" (154-155). This is a slow-burn of a novel that does not provide easy or satisfactory answers.