White Teeth

White TeethZadie 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

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. Set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire and into the past as it barrels toward the future, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.

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

Review Citations: 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

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