From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Swing Time, White Teeth and On Beauty- a masterful and intimate novel of modern London life
'A triumph. Every sentence sings' Guardian
'Intensely funny, richly varied, always unexpected. A joyous, optimistic, angry masterpiece' Daily Telegraph
'Smith's most satisfying novel. Funny, sexy, weird, full of acute social comedy. She's up there with the best around' Evening Standard
Zadie Smith's brilliant tragicomic NW follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the choices they've made, the people they once were and are now, can suddenly, rapidly unravel. Funny, poignant and vividly contemporary, NW is as brimming with vitality as the city itself.
“A boldly Joycean appropriation, fortunately not so difficult of entry as its great model . . . Like Zadie Smith’s much-acclaimed predecessor White Teeth (2000), NW is an urban epic.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
“[NW] is that rare thing, a book that is radical and passionate and real.” —Anne Enright, The New York Times Book Review
"Endlessly fascinating . . . remarkable. . . . The impression of Smith's casual brilliance is what constantly surprises, the way she tosses off insights about parenting and work that you've felt in some nebulous way but never been able to articulate.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“A marvelously accomplished work, perhaps her most polished yet.” —Laura Miller, Salon
“A triumph . . . As Smith threads together her characters' inner and outer worlds, every sentence sings.” —The Guardian
“Smith's fiction has never been this deadly, direct, or economical . . . Where gifts are concerned, Smith is generous with hers; she writes, one feels, with our pleasure in mind . . . NW is Zadie Smith’s riskiest, meanest, most political and deeply felt book—but it all feels so effortless. She dazzles.” —Parul Sehgal, Bookforum
“NW offers a nuanced, disturbing exploration of the boundaries, some porous, some impenetrable, between people living cheek by jowl in urban centers where the widening gap between haves and have-nots has created chasms into which we're all in danger of falling.” —NPR.org
