This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from 'The Remains of the Day' to 'High Fidelity'. A team of conte[...]
In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams. Why should you stop what you're doing and read a[...]
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 frien[...]
"A glorious concoction written by our most beguiling and original prose-wizard"
Independent on Sunday
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 â[...]
'White Teeth' is a comic epic of multicultural Britain which tells the story of immigrants in England over a period of 40 years.[...]
How did George Eliots 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 [...]
Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering Professor at Wellington College. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was.
Their three children passio[...]
"NW" is Zadie Smith's masterful novel about London life. Zadie Smith's brilliant tragi-comic "NW" follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and a[...]
Struggling with a stale marriage and the misguided passions of his three adult children, long-suffering art professor Howard Belsey finds his family life thrown into turmoil by his son's engagement to the socially prominent daughter of a right-wing icon. By the author of White Teeth. Reader's Guide [...]
In an unusual introduction to the fiction writing process, a group of notable authors and graphic novelists--including Nick Horsby, Chris Ware, Colm Tibn, George Saunders, and others--describe how they create a character, in an anthology in which each writer develops an individual fictional characte[...]
" These essays] reflect a lively, unselfconscious, rigorous, erudite, and earnestly open mind that's busy refining its view of life, literature, and a great deal in between."
-"Los Angeles Times"
Split into five sections-Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering--"Changing My Mind" f[...]
One of the "New York Times Book Review"'s 10 Best Books of 2012
Set in northwest London, Zadie Smith's brilliant tragicomic novel follows four locals--Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan--as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. In private houses [...]
This book is an introduction to the work of Zadie Smith that places her fiction in a clear historical, critical and theoretical context, and explores her work in relation to contemporaneity and postcolonialism. Including an interview with the author, this guide offers an accessible reading of Smith'[...]
"NW" is Zadie Smith's masterful novel about London life. Zadie Smith's brilliant tragi-comic "NW" follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and a[...]
A novel about London life. It follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated.[...]
First published this Spring in the New Yorker, THE EMBASSY OF CAMBODIA is a rare and brilliant story from Zadie Smith, taking us deep into the life of a young woman, Fatou, domestic servant to the Derawals and escapee from one set of hardships to another.[...]
NW is Zadie Smith's masterful novel about London life. Zadie Smith's brilliant tragi-comic NW follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives.
From private houses to public parks, at wo[...]
Zadie Smithâs dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smithâs voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own.
At the cent[...]
Autograph trader Alex-Li Tandem embarks on a picaresque odyssey that takes him from London to New York in pursuit of the only autograph that has ever really mattered to him, dealing with mystical lore, con men, interfering rabbis, fellow collectors, and bonsai dealers that would hinder his quest. By[...]
In 1957, New York photojournalist Jerry Dantzic spent time with the iconic singer Billie Holiday during a week-long run of performances at the Newark, New Jersey, nightclub Sugar Hill. The resulting images offer a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of Billie with her family, friends, and her pet chihuah[...]
"A boldly Joycean appropriation, fortunately not so difficult of entry as its great model... Like Zadie Smith's much-acclaimed predecessor "White Teeth "(2000), "NW" is an urban epic." --Joyce Carol Oates, "The New York Review of Books"
This is the story of a city.
The northwest corner of [...]
Since the publication of White Teeth in 2000, Zadie Smith has become one of the most popular contemporary writers and also one of the mostly widely studied. Taking criticism of Smith's work beyond its traditional focus on postcolonialism and multicultural identity, Reading Zadie Smith brings togethe[...]
Since the publication of White Teeth in 2000, Zadie Smith has become one of the most popular contemporary writers and also one of the mostly widely studied. Taking criticism of Smith's work beyond its traditional focus on postcolonialism and multicultural identity, Reading Zadie Smith brings togethe[...]
Historically, English-language readers have been great fans of European literature, and names like Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, and Thomas Mann are so familiar we hardly think of them as foreign at all. What those writers brought to English-language literature was a wide variety of new ideas, styl[...]
Struggling with a stale marriage and the misguided passions of his three adult children, long-suffering art professor Howard Belsey finds his family life thrown into turmoil by his son's engagement to the socially prominent daughter of a right-wing icon. By the author of White Teeth. 200,000 first p[...]