Zadie Smith - White Teeth

White Teeth

by

Zadie Smith

"A rich, ambitious and often hilarious delight'

Independent on Sunday

"A rollicking, thundering, good-natured, ironic blast of a debut; a story that bowls along on an energy so raucous, smart-mouthed and fast that the force of it almost steamrollers the many plots and characters that make up its multi cultured 20th-century British family saga... so readable and good-hearted ... a book full of admirable energy and salvaged joie de vivre, a truly epic, shining piece of life' Scotsman

"Outstanding ... A strikingly clever and funny book with a passion for ideas, for language and for

PENGUIN BOOKS

White Teeth

"Quirky, sassy and wise ... a big, splashy, populous production reminiscent of books by Dickens and Salman Rushdie ... demonstrates both an instinctive storytelling talent and a fully fashioned voice that's street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time In what will surely rank as one of her generation's most precocious debuts, Smith announces herself as a writer of remarkable powers' The New York Times

"An extraordinarily accomplished first novel, a new voice that will give its readers hope for a multicultural society' Financial Times

"Exceptional talent... Smith writes like an old hand, and, sometimes, like a dream' New Yorker

"Extremely funny ... witty and fresh with authenticity ... Smith is not merely telling a story, she is creating a world ... White Teeth is one of the best first novels of recent years, characterized by a sharp intelligence, a love of words and a broad range of allusion, both to literature and pop culture' Literary Review

"A great big blast of a novel' Independent

"Has energy, pace, humour and fully formed characters; it is blissfully free of the introversion and self-conscious detail that mar many first novels ... the dialogue is pitch perfect... bounding, vibrant, richly imagined and thoroughly enjoyable' Daily Telegraph

"The comedy fizzes up through the characters' Economist ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975, and continues to live in the area.

White Teeth

ZADIE SMITH

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England penguin Putnam Inc." 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4v 382

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Johannesburg 2094, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 2000

Published in Penguin Books 2001

Copyright (c) Zadie Smith, 2000 All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted The publisher is grateful for permission to reproduce the following extracts: "As Time Goes By', words and music by Herman Hupfeld, copyright 1931 by The. B. Harms Company, all rights assigned to Warner Chappell Music Inc." all rights reserved, lyric reproduced by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd (Carlin), London nwi sbd, covering the Commonwealrfrof Nations including Canada, Australasia and Hong Kong, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Africa and Spain only; Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster, Penguin Books, Twentieth-Century Classics edition; Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Penguin Books, Twentieth-Century Classics edition; "My Back Pages' by Bob Dylan, copyright (c) 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc." copyright renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music, all rights reserved, international copyright secured, reprinted by permission; (p. 228) the Koran, Sura 109 and (p.

501) Sura 52-44, translation by N. J. Dawood, first published by Penguin Books 1956; (p. 501) the Koran, Sura 52.44 and (p. 502) Sura 52.49, translation by J. M. Rod well, first published 1861, Orion Publishing Group, Orion House, 5 Upper St. Martin's Lane, London we2E

pea; and (p. 502) the Koran, Sura 52-49, translation by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, first published 1930, UBSPD, 5 Ansari Road, New Delhi 110002.

Set in 11/13 pt Monotype Dante

Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St. Ives pic Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser To my mother and my father Andforjimmi Rahman

"What's past is prologue' The Tempest, Act II, scene i Contents

Acknowledgements xi

Archie 1974, 1945

1. The Peculiar Second Marriage of Archie Jones 2. Teething Trouble 27

3. Two Families 46

4. Three Coming 67

5. The Root Canals of Alfred Archibald Jonesand Samad Miah Iqbal 83

Samad 1984, 1857

6. The Temptation of Samad Iqbal 125

7. Molars 161

8. Mitosis 183

9. Mutiny! 210

10. The Root Canals of Mangal Pande 244

Irie 1990, 1907

11. The Miseducation of Irie Jones 265

12. Canines: The Ripping Teeth 309

13. The Root Canals of Hortense Bowden 356

14. More English than the English 365

15. Chalfenism versus Bowdenism 381

Magid, Millat and Marcus 1992,1999

16. The Return of Magid Mahfooz MurshedMubtasim Iqbal 415

17. Crisis Talks and Eleventh-hour Tactics 437

18. The End of History versus The Last Man 467

19. The Final Space 491

20. Of Mice and Memory 520

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to both Lisa and Joshua Appignanesi for contriving between them to get me a room of my own when it was most required.

Thanks are due to Tristan Hughes and Yvonne Bailey-Smith for providing two happy homes for this book and its author. I am also indebted to the bright ideas and sharp eyes of the following people: Paul Hilder, friend and sounding-board; Nicholas Laird, fellow idiot savant', Donna Poppy, meticulous in everything; Simon Prosser, as judicious an editor as one could hope for; and finally my agent, Georgia Garrett, from whom nothing escapes.

Archie

1974,1945

"Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that "nothing hangs on it" it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing how am I to put it? which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever." Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster i The Peculiar Second Marriage of Archie Jones

Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on i January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel; scrunched up in each fist he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage licence (right), for he had decided to take his mistakes with him. A little green light flashed in his eye, signalling a right turn he had resolved never to make. He was resigned to it. He was prepared for it. He had flipped a coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. This was a decided-upon suicide. In fact it was a New Year's resolution.

But even as his breathing became spasmodic and his lights dimmed, Archie was aware that Cricklewood Broadway would seem a strange choice.