White Teeth

Zadie Smith

May 2003 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

NATIONAL 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

Ratings and reviews

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is a multi-layered, thought-provoking and extremely funny novel that tackles timely and sensitive topics with a rare, nuanced touch. Archie Jones is the archetypical Everyman-a working-class man with low ambitions and a seemingly simplistic view of the world. As White Teeth opens, he is on the edge of a successful suicide attempt when he is saved by a Halal Butcher who is more disturbed by Archie’s car blocking his deliveries than by the fact that he has discovered a man on the brink of death. Archie gains a new zest for life after being pulled back from the brink and is riding high on his new-found optimism when he encounters the enchanting Clara at a nearby party. She is a statuesque Jamaican woman who is also coincidentally seeking change and the two make quite an unusual pair. From their union the story blossoms to envelop other wonderfully imagined characters, each struggling in some way with the cultural clashes, traditions and identities that are enmeshed in an increasingly diverse British city. Smith addresses the juxtaposition of faith and science, cultural preservation and integration of immigrants, violent protest and tolerant acceptance. Although these topics can easily be rendered too heavy and didactic, Zadie Smith manages to provide incisive commentary on these important issues while also skillfully unfolding an addictive narrative with characters worth caring about.

Irie and the author are both multi- racial products. Very vivid expressions of native cultures with their originality. The author glorifies the macho personality and sexual activities of Millat.I am jealous of Millat. I want to be him, every ounce of him. But I hated the way the author killed his personality to simple radicalism of jihad. Samad was the most pathetic character but unfortunately there are plenty of Samads in our society, especially in Asia. To comment on Irie herself(Zadie Smith), I have no power to do so. I admire every bit of Irie so much as I admire Zadie Smith. I cannot do any injustice of differentiating them. Silent Archie becomes a hero at the end. The author gives her father a chance to be a hero. I would have liked Clara Jones to have had more opportunity and importance though(may be it is a boy mother thing) Please read the book to understand how "Indian" cultures fit in the struggle to survive in a western civilization.

There us no dull moment while reading this book.

About the author

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, and a short story collection, Grand Union. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Smith was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, and was listed as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. White Teeth won multiple literary awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith is currently a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.