Awards
2001 Puddly Award – Debut Novel
2000 Whitbread Award – First Novel
A
New York Times "Editors' Choice" for one of the best books of 2000.
Nominated in 2001 for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
Synopses & Reviews
Zadie Smith?s 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 Smith?s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own.
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England?s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn?t quite match her name (Jamaican for ?no problem?). Samad?s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal?s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. Set against London?s racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire and into the past as it barrels toward the future, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.
Review:
"[A] vibrant, rollicking first novel about race and idenity....[Smith's] prickly wit is affectionate and poignant." People
Review:
"[A] marvel of a debut novel....Reminiscent of both Salman Rushdie and John Irving,
White Teeth is a comic, canny, sprawling tale, adeptly held together by Smith's literary sleight of hand."
Entertainment WeeklyReview:
"A magnificent and audacious novel, jam-packed with memorable characters and challenging ideas." The Atlanta Journal & Constitution
Review:
"Ambitious, earnest and irreverent....Smith has a real talent for comedy and a fond eye for human foibles." The Wall Street Journal
Review:
"Smith has an astonishing intellect. She writes sharp dialogue for every age and race — and she's funny as hell." Newsweek
Synopsis:
At the center of this invigorating and hilarious novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, hapless veterans of World War II. Set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire's past as it barrels toward the future, "White Teeth" is an international bestseller now available in paperback.
About the Author
Zadie Smith was born in northwest London in 1975.
The Autograph Man is her second novel. Her first,
White Teeth, was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and the Commonweatlh Writers First Book Prize. She is currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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