P. Tew - Zadie Smith

A strong, clearly organised study which offers original analysis of Smiths work and provides helpful direction for students in the ways they might begin to approach her writing Daniel Lea, Oxford Brookes University

Since the publication of her high profile debut novel, White Teeth, Zadie Smith has cemented her place within the flourishing canon of young British authors. In this first full-length introduction to her work, Philip Tew assesses existing criticism and offers new perspectives, positioning her fiction in the context of both contemporary English and postcolonial traditions.

Student friendly and thought-provoking, Zadie Smith includes:

A supporting timeline of key dates

Biographical and cultural analysis of key texts

Discussion of the full range of Smiths work, including her short stories and novels

A survey of selected landmark interviews

A comprehensive overview of the critical reception of Smiths work to date

PHILIP TEW is Professor of English (post-1900 Literature) at Brunel University, Director of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing and Founding Director of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies. He is an internationally acknowledged expert in contemporary British fiction and has published widely in the field.

Each volume in this series offers a well-researched and clear introduction to a key novelist from an exciting new generation that has emerged during and after the 1970s. A user-friendly format will guide the reader through a clear and theoretically informed overview of a significant British writer. The series provides biographical information, a range of critical readings, and an informed exploration of relevant literary and cultural contexts. These guides will enable readers to contextualize and so deepen their understanding of New British Fiction.

Series editors:

Philip Tew

Rod Mengham

Published

Sonya Andermahr: Jeanette Winterson

Bradley Buchanann: Hanif Kureishi

Frederick M. Holmes: Julian Barnes

Kaye Mitchell: A. L. Kennedy

Robert Morace: Irvine Welsh

Stephen Morton: Salman Rushdie

Philip Tew: Zadie Smith

Forthcoming

Gerard Barrett: Graham Swift

Sebastian Groes: Martin Amis

Rod Mengham: Jonathan Coe

Mark Rawlinson: Pat Barker

Lynn Wells: Ian McEwan

Mark Wormald: Kazuo Ishiguro

New British Fiction Series

Series Standing Order

ISBN 1403942749 hardback

ISBN 1403942757 paperback

(outside North America only)

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in the case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above.

Customer Services Department, Palgrave Ltd

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NEW BRITISH FICTION

Zadie Smith

Philip Tew

Philip Tew 2010

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2010 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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ISBN-13: 9780230516755 hardback

ISBN-13: 9780230516762 paperback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

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Printed and bound in China

Balj Bhinder

recalling Bengal Spice banquet nights and Euro road trips:

long may they continue.

This series highlights with its very title two crucial elements in the nature of contemporary British fiction, especially as a field for academic research and study. The first term indicates the originality and freshness of such writing expressed in a huge formal diversity. The second evokes the cultural identity of the authors included, who nevertheless represent through their diversity a challenge to any hegemonic or narrow view of Britishness. As regards the fiction, many of the writers featured in this series continue to draw from and adapt long traditions of cultural and aesthetic practice. Such aesthetic continuities contrast starkly with the conditions of knowledge at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, a period that has been characterized by an apprehension of radical presentness, a sense of unprecedented forms of experience and an obsession with new modes of self-awareness. This stage of the survival of the novel may perhaps be best remembered as a millennial and postmillennial moment, a time of fluctuating reading practices and of historical events whose impact is largely still unresolved. The new fiction of these times reflects a rapidly changing cultural and ideological reality, as well as a renewal of the commitment of both writers and readers to both the relevance and utility of narrative forms of knowledge.

Each volume in this series will serve as an introductory guide to an individual author chosen from a list of those whose work has proved to be of general interest to reviewers, academics, students and the general reading public. Each volume will offer information concerning the life, work and literary and cultural contexts appropriate to the chosen subject of each book; individual volumes will share the same overall structure with a largely common organization of materials. The result is intended to be suitable for both academic and general readers: putting accessibility at a premium, without compromising an ambitious series of readings of todays most vitally interesting British novelists, interpreting their work, assessing their influences and exploring their relationship to the times in which they live.