Works by
Zadie Smith
(Writer)
[October 27, 1975 - ]

As Editor

• The Book of Other People (2008)
  The Book of Other People is about character. Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By any measure, creating character is at the heart of the fictional enterprise, and this book concentrates on writers who share a talent for making something recognizably human out of words (and, in the case of the graphic novelists, pictures). But the purpose of the book is variety: straight “realism”—if such a thing exists—is not the point. There are as many ways to create character as there are writers, and this anthology features a rich assortment of exceptional examples.
  
  The writers featured include: Aleksandar Hemon, Chris Ware, Colm Tóibín, David Mitchell, George Saunders, Hari Kunzru, Nick Hornby, Toby Litt, and more.

• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 (2003), Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith, ed.
  The Best American Nonrequired Reading has once again chosen the best and least-expected fiction, nonfiction, satire, investigative reporting, alternative comics, and more from publications large, small, and on-line.  Includes works by Andrea Lee, David Sedaris , J. T. Leroy, Jonathan Safran Foer, Lisa Gabriele, Lynda Barry, Nasdijj, and ZZ Packer.

• Zadie Smith Introduces the Burned Children of America: The Best Young Writers from the USA (2003)
  Includes A. M. Homes, Aimee Bender, Amanda Davis, Arthur Bradford, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Jeffrey Eugenides, Joanathan Lethem, Jonathan Safran Foer, Judith Buonitz, Julia Slavin, Ken Kalfus, Matthew Klam, Myla Goldberg, Rick Moody, Sam Lipsyte, Shelley Jackson, and Stacey Richter

• Piece of Flesh (2001)
  Anthology of erotic short stories includes work by Daren King, Toby Litt and Matt Thorne, and Zadie Smith.

• The May Anthologies (2001)

Fiction

• Martha and Hanwell (2005)

• On Beauty (2005)
  Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts 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 passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists. Faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Or the encore. Then Jerome, Howard's older son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps, and the two families find themselves thrown together in a beautiful corner of America, enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register. An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that sees all parties forced to examine the unarticulated assumptions which underpin their lives. How do you choose the work on which to spend your life? Why do you love the people you love? Do you really believe what you claim to? And what is the beautiful thing, and how far will you go to get it? Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions. It is also, as you might expect, very funny indeed.

• The Autograph Man (2002)
  Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. His business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them—all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of forties movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.
  
  The Autograph Man is a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow trappings of modernity: celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. It offers further proof that Zadie Smith is one of the most staggeringly talented writers of her generation

• White Teeth (2000) -- Winner 2000 Whitbread First Novel Award; Winner Betty Trask Award; Winner Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize; Winner Guardian First Book Award; Winner James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction
  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.

Other

• Speaking with the Angel (2001) by Nick Hornby
  Includes works by Colin Firth, Melissa Bank, Patrick Marber, Robert Harris, and Zadie Smith

See also:

• Zadie Smith: Criticial Essays (2008 release) by Tracey L. Walters
  Zadie Smith: Critical Essays is a timely collection of critical articles examining how Zadie Smith’s novels and short stories interrogate race, postcolonialism, and identity. Essays explore the various ways Smith approaches issues of race, either by deconstructing notions of race or interrogating the complexity of biracial identity; and how Smith takes on contemporary debates concerning notions of Britishness, Englishness, and Black Britishness. Some essays also consider the shifting identities adopted by those who identify with both British and West Indian, South Asian, or East Asian ancestry. Other essays explore Smith’s contemporary postcolonial approach to Britain’s colonial legacy, and the difference between how immigrants and first-generation British-born children deal with cultural alienation and displacement. This thought-provoking collection is a much-needed critical tool for students and researchers in both contemporary British literature and Diasporic literature and culture.