Zadie Smith Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Zadie Smith

Summer is the time for murders set somewhere interesting: Christopher Bollen is the master of these. His latest, The Lost Americans, set in Egypt, is a treat.

Zadie Smith

Morrison is the great master of American complexity, and Recitatif, in my view, sits alongside ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ and ‘The Lottery’ as a perfect—and perfectly American—tale, one every American child should read.

Zadie Smith

This is a deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly.

Zadie Smith

A work of genius. But more important—and from a purely selfish point of view—a woman wrote it. That might seem ridiculous to male writers, but a man never has to think twice about the gender of genius…Eliot was the first woman I read who could go toe-to-toe with, say, Tolstoy.

Zadie Smith

I also just finished Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner, out in July. Rare to find a novel with real stylistic and political ambition.

Zadie Smith

I recently devoured Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. So enjoyable.

Zadie Smith

I think Susan Sontag’s On Women is perfect if you want to think about the aesthetics of fascism and internecine feminist warfare during the summer – which I find I do.

Zadie Smith

Reading Wallace for the first time was also about the hideous revelation of a talent a lot bigger than mine…Wallace's prose has brought me as much envy as it has joy over the years. He makes me more ambitious for myself.

Zadie Smith

Beautiful. It sits like a jewel in your mind... Chloe’s writing matters not because its topics are ripped from today’s headlines but because she is trying to illuminate this world using only words. The politics of her prose is existential rather than anecdotal, as it was with Kafka’s.

Zadie Smith

You are invited to laugh at him, and then you are humbled and shamed by your own laughter. It's a gorgeous, hilarious, humane book that uncovers the reality of a man's life in sly, piecemeal fashion. I think it's my favorite novel.