The Literature Book

325

See also: Cry, the Beloved Country 286 ■ A House for Mr. Biswas 289 ■ Interpreter of Maladies 338 ■ Life of Pi 338 ■

The Kite Runner 338 ■ Half of a Yellow Sun 339

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

for both men. Samad has twin

boys, Magid and Millat, through

his arranged marriage with Alsana;

Archie and his Jamaican-born wife

Clara have a daughter named Irie.

Samad, now a “curry shifter” in

a local restaurant, decides to send

his son Magid back to Bangladesh

to have him raised with a respect

for his Muslim heritage; but when

Magid returns years later, it is as a

secular scientist. By ironic contrast,

his twin, wild-child Millat, joins a

Muslim fundamentalist group. Irie

is drawn to her mother’s homeland

through her grandmother. Millat,

Magid, and Irie struggle, as their

parents do, with the feeling that

they belong nowhere, in contrast to

those that have lived in Britain for

generations and enjoy the luxury

of history and entitlement. “There

was England, a gigantic mirror, and

there was Irie, without reflection.”

Smith has an ear for dialogue,

and eyes everywhere—cataloguing

assaults on immigrant communities,

comprehensive schools awash with

hash, and the chattering middle

classes—as epitomized by the

intellectual white Chalfen family,

who exerts an inexorable influence

on Irie, Millat, and Magid.

Set in part during the Thatcher

years—the 1980s—the book is

dotted with cultural references, from

Salman Rushdie’s fatwa to street

gangs in Nike attire. Smith has

criticized her undergraduate novel,

but it remains a feisty chronicle of a

time that demanded new definitions

of what it was to be British. ■

Zadie Smith Zadie Smith was born in North

London in 1975 to an English

father and a Jamaican mother.

Originally named Sadie, she

changed her name to Zadie at 14.

Smith wrote her acclaimed first

novel White Teeth during her

final year at King’s College,

Cambridge. Moving to the US,

she studied at Harvard and taught

creative writing at Columbia

University School of Fine Arts

before taking her current post at

New York University. She divides

her time between New York and

London, with her husband, writer

Nick Laird, and their two children.

Smith has received nearly 20

nominations and awards for her

writing. In recent years she has

branched outm into short stories

and critical essays. In an article

in The Guardian newspaper she

was asked to give her 10 golden

rules for writing fiction, which

included: “Tell the truth through

whichever veil comes to hand—

but tell it.”

Other key works

2002 The Autograph Man

2005 On Beauty

2012 NW

Marcus

Chalfen Joyce

Samad

Iqbal

Alsana

Begum

Irie Millat Magid

Friends

Has crush on In love with

Chalfen family has major influence on

In White Teeth, the network of relationships among whites,

first-generation immigrants, and their British-born children

reflects the changing nature of British society.

Archie

Jones

Clara

Bowden

Joshua

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