Showing results by author "Zadie Smith" in All Categories

It is 1873. Mrs Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper - and cousin by marriage - of a once famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful? Set between New England and London, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families—the Belseys and the Kipps—and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kipps, the confusions—both personal and political—of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.

Zadie Smith's deeply funny, subversive and splendidly entertaining The Autograph Man is a whirlwind tour of celebrity and our fame-obsessed times. Following one Alex-Li Tandem - a 20-something, Chinese Jewish autograph dealer turned on by sex, drugs and organised religion - it takes in London and New York, love and death, fathers and sons, as Alex tries to discover how a piece of paper can bring him closer to his heart's desire. Exposing our misconceptions about our idols - about ourselves - Zadie Smith delivers a brilliant, unforgettable tale about who we are and what we really want to be. 

Deeply personal and powerfully moving, a short and timely series of essays on the experience of lockdown, by one of the most clear-sighted and essential writers of our time. Crafted with the sharp intelligence, wit and style that have won Zadie Smith millions of fans and suffused with a profound intimacy and tenderness in response to these unprecedented times, Intimations is a vital work of art, a gesture of connection and an act of love - an essential book in extraordinary times.

Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a classic international best seller and an unforgettable portrait of London. One of the most talked about fictional debuts ever, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-listen.

Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, when they were thrown together as roommates in a girls' shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then at a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, but despite their conflict, the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them is undeniable.

The one and only Zadie Smith, prize-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth, is back with a second unmissable collection of essays. No subject is too fringe or too mainstream for the unstoppable Zadie Smith. From social media to the environment, from Jay-Z to Karl Ove Knausgaard, she has boundless curiosity and the boundless wit to match. In Feel Free, pop culture, high culture, social change and political debate all get the Zadie Smith treatment, dissected with razor-sharp intellect.

Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and true identity, how they shape us and how we can survive them. Moving from Northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of time. Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe or makes a person truly free.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of NW, Zadie Smith’s first novel since the bestselling On Beauty. Read by Don Gilet and Karen Bryson. This is the story of a city. The north-west corner of a city. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all. And many people in between.

How did George Eliot's love life affect her prose? Why did Kafka write at three in the morning? In what ways is Barack Obama like Eliza Doolittle? Can you be over-dressed for the Oscars? What is Italian Feminism? If Roland Barthes killed the Author, can Nabokov revive him? What does 'soulful' mean? Is Date Movie the worst film ever made? A collection of essays that brims over with personality and warmth, Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive.

Interleaving 10 completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.

Set in New England mainly and London partly, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families—the Belseys and the Kippses—and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kippses, the confusions—both personal and political—of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.

Meet Maud: a guinea pig who inexplicably wears a judo suit - and not everyone understands or approves. When Maud is thrown into a new and confusing situation, it takes brave decisions and serendipitous encounters for her to find her place and embrace her individuality. Weirdo is an endearing story about the quiet power of being different by two veteran writers. Together they have created a story that adults and children alike will treasure.

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2003.
Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. He hunts for them, collects them, sells them, and occasionally fakes them, all to give the people a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the reinstatement of some kind of benevolent God figure, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of a Forties movie actress. With fries.

Author Zadie Smith discusses her much-anticipated third novel, On Beauty. Set on both sides of the Atlantic, the novel follows the chain of events when the son of a liberal British academic family falls in love with the daughter of an American right-wing icon. A brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, and the intersection of the personal and political, the book is also very funny indeed. Interviewed by Laura Miller of salon.com.

Zadie Smith ormai si è affermata come una delle scrittrici più iconiche, rispettate dalla critica e popolari della sua generazione. E oggi, a vent'anni dal memorabile esordio di "Denti bianchi", ci offre il suo primo libro di racconti, nel quale il suo potere di osservazione e la sua voce inimitabile si fondono per restituirci l'esperienza complessa, terribilmente complessa, della vita nella contemporaneità.

Protagonisti di questo romanzo sono due grandi amici, l'inglese Archie e il bengalese Samad. In una Londra dove l'estremismo è all'ordine del giorno, i due danno vita a una strana quanto improbabile coppia: Archie ha sempre seguito la corrente, Samad, invece, è un musulmano convinto, che mal sopporta la decadenza della società occidentale. Ad aggravare la già inquieta atmosfera arrivano i Chalfen, agiati intellettuali inglesi carichi di tutti i tic e le illusioni della Generazione dei Fiori. E l'incontro-scontro fra le diverse culture produrrà effetti tragicomici non meno che devastanti.