White TeethNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time—set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence. 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. “[White Teeth] is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones, and textures…with a raucous energy and confidence.” —The New York Times Book Review |
Contents
1 | |
3 | |
Teething Trouble | 23 |
Two Families | 39 |
Three Coming | 57 |
The Root Canals of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal | 71 |
SAMAD 1984 1857 | 103 |
The Temptation of Samad Iqbal | 105 |
The Miseducation of Irie Jones | 221 |
The Ripping Teeth | 257 |
The Root Canals of Hortense Bowden | 295 |
More English Than the English | 303 |
Chalfenism Versus Bowdenism | 315 |
MAGID MILLAT AND MARCUS 1992 1999 | 341 |
The Return of Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal | 343 |
Crisis Talks and EleventhHour Tactics | 361 |
Molars | 135 |
Mitosis | 153 |
Mutiny | 175 |
The Root Canals of Mangal Pande | 203 |
IRIE 1990 1907 | 219 |
The End of History Versus The Last Man | 387 |
The Final Space | 407 |
Of Mice and Memory | 431 |
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Common terms and phrases
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