White Teeth (Paperback)

by Zadie Smith

Format: Paperback 560 pages

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Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" is a classic international bestseller and an unforgettable portrait of London. One of the most talked about fictional debuts of 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-read of a book. "Funny, clever ...and a rollicking good read". ("Independent"). "An astonishingly assured debut, funny and serious ...I was delighted". (Salman Rushdie). "The almost preposterous talent was clear from the first pages". (Julian Barnes, "Guardian"). "Quirky, sassy and wise ...a big, splashy, populous production reminiscent of books by Dickens and Salman Rushdie ...demonstrates both an instinctive storytelling talent and a fully fashioned voice that's street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time". ("New York Times"). "Smith writes like an old hand, and, sometimes, like a dream". ("New Yorker"). "Outstanding ...A strikingly clever and funny book with a passion for ideas, for language and for the rich tragic-comedy of life". ("Sunday Telegraph"). "Do believe the hype". ("The Times"). "Relentlessly funny ...idiosyncratic, and deeply felt". ("Guardian"). Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975. Her debut novel, "White Teeth", won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers' First Book Prize, and was included in TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Her second novel, "On Beauty", was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has written two further novels, "The Autograph Man" and "NW", a collection of essays, "Changing My Mind", and also edited a short-story anthology, "The Book of Other People".

Book details

Published
25/01/2001

Publisher
Penguin Books Ltd

ISBN
9780140276336



Publisher and industry reviews

UK Kirkus review

In the last two decades, what this novel describes as the 'great ocean-crossing experiment' has added a whopping dose of fertiliser to British literature, enabling it to flower as never before. And now, with Smith's impressive debut, there are signs of fresh growth. Smith's disillusioned men, frustrated women and torn teenagers are 'midnight's grandchildren', for whom cultural meltdown, segregation and reinvention are recurring themes. Her narrative charts the tragi-comic progress of Samad Iqbal and Archie Jones from World War II to 1990s London. It's here, amid the caffs and tikka restaurants of Willesden that both men settle and found families - Archie with the Afro-Carribean Clara, and Samad with Alsana, from his native Bengal. And it is here that their assorted offspring do battle with the expectations and hypocrisies of their elders and the seductive lure of fundamentalism. Smith's habit of switching protagonists almost in mid-stream gives the book a directionless feel, but what the novel lacks in narrative drive it makes up for in humour, verve and stylistic playfulness. And while Smith's intelligent, feisty prose style bears more than a passing resemblance to Salman Rushdie's, the territory she lays claim to is her own. A writer to watch. (Kirkus UK)

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