Zadie Smith Popular Books
Zadie Smith Biography & Facts
Zadie Smith FRSL (born Sadie; 25 October 1975) is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010. Early life and education Zadie Smith was born on 25 October 1975 in Willesden to a Jamaican mother, Yvonne Bailey, and an English father, Harvey Smith, who was 30 years his wife's senior. At the age of 14, she changed her name from Sadie to Zadie. Smith's mother grew up in Jamaica and emigrated to England in 1969. Smith's parents divorced when she was a teenager. She has a half-sister, a half-brother, and two younger brothers (one is the rapper and stand-up comedian Doc Brown, and the other is the rapper Luc Skyz). As a child, Smith was fond of tap dancing, and in her teenage years, she considered a career in musical theatre. While at university, Smith earned money as a jazz singer, and wanted to become a journalist. Smith attended the local state schools, Malorees Junior School and Hampstead Comprehensive School, then King's College, Cambridge, where she studied English literature. In an interview with The Guardian in 2000, Smith corrected a newspaper assertion that she left Cambridge with a double First. "Actually, I got a Third in my Part Ones," she said. She graduated with upper second-class honours. While at university Smith auditioned unsuccessfully for the Cambridge Footlights. At Cambridge, Smith published a number of short stories in a collection of new student writing called The Mays Anthology. They attracted the attention of a publisher, who offered her a contract for her first novel. She decided to contact a literary agent and was taken on by A. P. Watt. Smith returned to guest-edit the anthology in 2001. Career Smith's debut novel, White Teeth, was introduced to the publishing world in 1997 before it was completed. On the basis of a partial manuscript, an auction for the rights was begun, which was won by Hamish Hamilton. Smith completed White Teeth during her final year at the University of Cambridge. Published in 2000, the novel immediately became a best-seller and received much acclaim. It was praised internationally and won a number of awards, among them the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Betty Trask Award. The novel was adapted for television in 2002. In July 2000, Smith's debut work was discussed in a controversial essay of literary criticism by James Wood entitled "Human, All Too Inhuman", where Wood critiques the novel as part of a contemporary genre of hysterical realism where "‘[i]nformation has become the new character" and human feeling is absent from contemporary fiction. In an article for The Guardian in October 2001, Smith responded to the criticism by agreeing with the accuracy of the term and with Wood's underlying argument that "any novel that aims at hysteria will now be effortlessly outstripped". However, she rejected her debut being categorised alongside major authors such as David Foster Wallace, Salman Rushdie, and Don DeLillo, and the dismissal of their own innovations on the basis of being hysterical realism. Responding earnestly to Wood's concerns about contemporary literature and culture, Smith described her own anxieties as a writer and argued that fiction should be "not a division of head and heart, but the useful employment of both". Smith served as writer-in-residence at the ICA in London and subsequently published, as editor, an anthology of sex writing, Piece of Flesh, as the culmination of this role. Smith's second novel, The Autograph Man, was published in 2002 and was a commercial success, although it was not as well received by critics as White Teeth. After the publication of The Autograph Man, Smith visited the United States as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She started work on a still-unreleased book of essays, The Morality of the Novel (a.k.a. Fail Better), in which she considers a selection of 20th-century writers through the lens of moral philosophy. Some portions of this book presumably appear in the essay collection Changing My Mind, published in November 2009. Smith's third novel, On Beauty, was published in September 2005. It is set largely in and around Greater Boston. It attracted more acclaim than The Autograph Man: it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Later in the same year, Smith published Martha and Hanwell, a book that pairs two short stories about two troubled characters, originally published in Granta and The New Yorker respectively. Penguin published Martha and Hanwell with a new introduction by the author as part of their pocket series to celebrate their 70th birthday. The first story, "Martha, Martha", deals with Smith's familiar themes of race and postcolonial identity, while "Hanwell in Hell" is about a man struggling to cope with the death of his wife. In December 2008 she guest-edited the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. After teaching fiction at Columbia University School of the Arts, Smith joined New York University as a tenured professor of fiction in 2010. Between March and October 2011, Smith was the monthly New Books reviewer for Harper's Magazine. She is also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. In 2010, The Guardian newspaper asked Smith for her "10 rules for writing fiction". Among them she declared: "Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied." Smith's novel NW was published in 2012. It is set in the Kilburn area of north-west London, the title being a reference to the local postcode, NW6. NW was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction. The book was made into a BBC television film directed by Saul Dibb and adapted by Rachel Bennette. Starring Nikki Amuka-Bird and Phoebe Fox, it was broadcast on BBC Two on 14 November 2016. In 2015, it was announced that Smith, along with her husband Nick Laird, was writing the screenplay for a science fiction movie to be directed by French filmmaker Claire Denis. Smith later said that her involvement had been overstated and that she had simply helped to polish the English dialogue for the film. Smith's fifth novel, Swing Time, was published in November 2016. It drew inspiration from Smith's childhood love of tap dancing. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017. Smith is a contributor to Margaret Busby's 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa (as is her mother Yvonne Bailey-Smith). Smith's first collection of short stories, Grand Union, was published on 8 October 2019. In 2020 she published six essays in a collection entitled Intimations, the royalties from which she said she would be donating to the Equal Justice Initiati.... Discover the Zadie Smith popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Zadie Smith books.
Best Seller Zadie Smith Books of 2024
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The Wife of Willesden
Zadie SmithZadie Smith's first time writing for the stage, a riotous twentyfirst century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Wife of Bath“Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aun...
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Chess
Stefan Zweig'... a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board,...
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The Gifts of Reading
Robert MacfarlaneFrom the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE LOST WORDS an essay on the joy of reading, for anyone who has ever loved a bookEvery book is a kind of gift to its r...
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Inciting Joy
Ross GayFrom Ross Gay, the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights, comes an intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection. ...
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The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey ChaucerAt the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a jovial group of pilgrims assembles, including an unscrupulous Pardoner, a nobleminded Knight, a ribald Miller, the lusty Wife of Bath, and Chaucer...
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Intimations
Zadie Smith“[Smith’s] slim collection of essays captures this peculiar moment with startling clarity. . . . The personal and political intermingle for a powerful indictment of America’s socia...
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Zadie Smith
Sylvia HadjetianContent 1. Introduction 2. White culture a) Archie Jones b) The Chalfen Family 3. Black culture a) Clara BowdenJones b) Hortense Bowden c) Irie BowdenJones 4. Islamic culture a) Sa...
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Taking Up Space
Chelsea Kwakye & Ore Ogunbiyi'Brilliant' CANDICE CARTYWILLIAMS, author of QUEENIE'Essential' BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER'Hugely important' PAULA AKPANAs a minority in a predominantly whit...
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The Autograph Man
Zadie SmithFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Swing Time and one of the most revered writers of her generation comes an "intelligent ... exquisitely clever [novel] about fame, mort...
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Ponti
Sharlene TeoAn awardwinning novel about the value of friendships in presentday Singaporea “stirring debut…relatable yet unsettling [that] smartly captures earnest teenage myopathy through a tu...
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The Bhagavad Gita
Juan MascaroThe Bhagavad Gita is an intensely spiritual work that forms the cornerstone of the Hindu faith, and is also one of the masterpieces of Sanskrit poetry. It describes how, at the beg...
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The Glorious American Essay
Phillip Lopate"Not only an education but a joy. This is a book for the ages." Rivka GalchenA monumental, canondefining anthology of three centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather a...
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The Irresponsible Self
James Wood"James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity."Cynthia OzickFollowing the collection The Broken Esta...
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On Beauty
Zadie SmithWinner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth"In this sharp, engaging satire, ...
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Changing My Mind
Zadie Smith"[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 A...
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The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories
Malcolm BradburyThis anthology is in many was a ‘best of the best’, containing gems from thirtyfour of Britain's outstanding contemporary writers. It is a book to dip into, to read from cover to c...
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The Last Suspicious Holdout
Ladee Hubbard“Fiercely intelligent, warm in their own way, and absolutely absorbing. . . . Excellent excellent excellent.”Roxane Gay“Ladee Hubbard is a true original, and this book is a unique ...
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White Teeth
Zadie SmithNATIONAL BESTSELLER The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Timeset against London's racial and c...
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NW
Zadie SmithA 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2012 One of TIME's Top 10...
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The Lonely Londoners
Sam SelvonBoth devastating and funny, The Lonely Londoners is an unforgettable account of immigrant experience and one of the great twentiethcentury London novelsAt Waterloo Station, hopefu...
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Hamlet
William Shakespeare'The Mona Lisa of literature' T. S. EliotIn Shakespeare's verbally dazzling and eternally enigmatic exploration of conscience, madness and the nature of humanity, a young prince m...
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The Way of All Flesh
Samuel Butler'I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave...
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Mine Boy
Peter Abrahams'One of my alltime favourite novels.' Tsitsi Dangarembga'The first African novel in English to draw international attention.' New York Times'The forerunner of an entire school of A...
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Family Furnishings
Alice MunroFrom the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literatureand one of our most beloved writersa new selection of her peerless short fiction, gathered from the collections of the last two...
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Late in the Day
Tessa Hadley“With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she’s one of the greatest stylists alive.”Ron Charles, Washington PostNew York Times Book Review Editors' Choice |A ...
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First Love
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev & Isaiah BerlinWhen the downatheel Princess Zasyekin moves next door to the country estate of Vladimir Petrovich's parents, he instantly and overwhelmingly falls in love with his new neighbour's ...
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Grand Union
Zadie SmithLonglisted for the Carnegie Medal! A dazzling collection of short fictionZadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular write...
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The Saga of the Volsungs
Jesse ByockPart of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, Beowulf is one of the classic books that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men le...
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Zadie Smith
Philip TewAn introduction to the work of Zadie Smith, placing her fiction in a clear historical and theoretical context, and exploring her work in relation to contemporaneity and postcolonia...
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The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings
Edgar Allan Poe, Peter Ackroyd & David GallowayThe Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings is a collection that displays the full force of Edgar Allen Poe's mastery of both Gothic horror and the short story form. This Pen...
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People Person
Candice Carty-WilliamsThe author of the “brazenly hilarious, tellitlikeitis first novel” (Oprah Daily) Queenie returns with another witty and insightful “treat” (Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession) ...
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The House of Ulloa
Emilia Pardo Bazán & Paul O'PreyThis rich and unforgettable story of sexual intrigue and political scheming, written by the Spanish feminist and intellectual Emilia Pardo Bazan, deserves recognition as one of the...
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If I Stay
Gayle FormanThe critically acclaimed, bestselling novel from Gayle Forman, author of Where She Went, Just One Day, and Just One Year. In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ...
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The Penguin Book of Migration Literature
Dohra Ahmad[Ahmad's] "introduction is fiery and charismatic... This book encompasses the diversity of experience, with beautiful variations and stories that bicker back and forth." Parul Sehg...
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Spring
Ali SmithFrom the Man Booker Prize Finalist comes the third novel in her Seasonal Quarteta New York Times Notable Book and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020Wha...
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The Fraud
Zadie SmithThe New York Times bestseller One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year One of NPR's Best Books of the Year Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekl...
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Recitatif
Toni Morrison & Zadie SmithNEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winnerfor the first time in a beau...
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That Hair
Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida & Eric M. B. BeckerFinalist for the 2021 PEN Translation PrizeA Best Translation of the Year at World Literature TodayThat Hair is a family album of sorts that touches upon the universal subjects of ...
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Swing Time
Zadie Smith“Smith’s thrilling cultural insights never overshadow the wholeness of her characters, who are so keenly observed that one feels witness to their lives.” O, The Oprah Magazine...
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Never Let Me Go
Kazuo IshiguroNOBEL PRIZE WINNER From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twista moving, suspen...
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Queenie
Candice Carty-WilliamsSOON TO BE A HULU ORIGINAL SERIESONE of NPR’s and TIME’s BEST BOOKS of the YEAR NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK of the YEAR by WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, and B...
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Summer
Ali SmithThe fourth novel in the Seasonal Quartet by Man Booker Prize Finalist Ali Smith is “a prose poem in praise of memory, forgiveness, getting the joke, and seizing the moment”...
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Happiness, as Such
Natalia Ginzburg & Minna ProctorThe hauntingly beautiful epistolary novel from “a glowing light of modern Italian literature” (New York Times Book Review) Longlisted for the PEN Translation AwardAt the heart of H...
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Feel Free
Zadie SmithWinner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Notable BookFrom Zadie Smith, one of the most beloved authors of her generation, a new col...
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Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Thomas De Quincey & Barry Milligan"Thou has the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!" Determined to counter the lies about opium that had been told by travellers to the Orient and the medical profes...
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Atlas of Unknowns
Tania JamesAn utterly irresistible first novel: The story of two sisters, the yearning to disappear into another country, and the powerful desire to return to the known world. “Dazzling and ...
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The Matter of Black Lives
Jelani Cobb & David RemnickA collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in Americaincluding work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, TaNehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and morewit...