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The Best Books of the 21st Century, from the New York Times
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Sign up todayWhite Teeth
A Novel
Length
18 hours 37 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki & Arya Sagar
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The blockbuster debut novel from “a preternaturally gifted” writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time—set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
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.
“[White Teeth] is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones, and textures…with a raucous energy and confidence.” —The New York Times Book Review
Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives. The Fraud is her first historical novel.
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Reviews
Praise for White Teeth"Zadie Smith's fizzing first novel is about how we all got here—from the Caribbean, from the Indian subcontinent, from thirteenth place in a long-ago Olympic bicycle race—and about what "here" turned out to be. It's an astonishingly assured debut, funny and serious, and the voice has real writerly idiosyncrasy. I was delighted by White Teeth and often impressed. It has . . . bite."
—Salman Rushdie
"A rich, ambitious, and often hilarious delight."
—The Independent
"This is a strikingly clever and funny book with a passion for ideas, for language, and for the rich tragicomedy of life. . . . [Smith's] characters always ring true; it is her ebullient, simple prose and her generous understanding of human nature that make Zadie Smith's novel outstanding. It is not only great fun to read, but full of hope."
—Sunday Telegraph
"A writer of mighty potential."
—The Times Literary Supplement
"Poised and relentlessly funny. . . . A major new talent."
—The Guardian
"Outstanding... refreshingly upbeat and deserving of all the attention it is getting." —The Evening Standard
"Outstanding... not only great fun to read, but full of hope."
—The Sunday Telegraph
"The biggest literary talent for 2000... One of the most impressive first
novels of recent years." —The Observer Magazine
"Funny, clever... and a rollicking good read." —The Independent
"Brilliantly written and hugely inspiring." —RED
"A vibrant, multicultural extravaganza." —Marie Claire
"The first publishing sensation of the millennium." —The Observer
"Darting between decades, cultures and generations, this chronicle of immigrant London fizzes with life." —Good Housekeeping
"Gleefully inventive... Zadie Smith's debut announces the debut of a significant new talent." —The List
"Bounding, vibrant, richly imagined and thoroughly engaging." —The Telegraph
"If you buy one book this year, WHITE TEETH should be it." —Livewire Magazine Expand reviews