White Teeth

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer (The New York Times ) and author of 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.

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

Author: Zadie Smith
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 06/12/2001
Pages: 464
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 8.63h x 5.13w x 0.98d
ISBN: 9780375703867

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.9
Point Value: 29
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 67005 / White Teeth


Review Citation(s):
BookPage 06/01/2001 pg. 25
Entertainment Weekly 06/22/2001 pg. 83
New York Times 06/17/2001 pg. 28
New York Times 12/02/2001 pg. 89
Booksense '76 Reading Grp 04 05/01/2004 pg. 1
Newsweek 12/21/2009 pg. 74
Village Voice 12/23/2009 pg. 28
Entertainment Weekly 07/05/2013 pg. 102
Entertainment Weekly 08/22/2014 pg. 113

About the Author
Zadie Smith was born in Northwest London in 1975 and still lives in the area. She is the author of White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, Changing My Mind, NW, and most recently Swing Time.