We just purchased NW by Zadie Smith last week (it’s the third book in our que) but we were pleasantly surprised to find that Ms. Smith read an excerpt from her book from national Public Radio in the United States. Here’s a clip:
Zadie Smith is is currently one of todays hottest writer’s having published her seventh book and just recently interviewed Jay Z for the New York Times ( A dream come true for Sugarcane). According to her publisher, NW is “This is the story of a city.The northwest corner of a city. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all. And many people in between.Every city is like this. Cheek-by-jowl living. Separate worlds.And then there are the visitations: the rare times a stranger crosses a threshold without permission or warning, causing a disruption in the whole system. Like the April afternoon a woman came to Leah Hanwell’s door, seeking help, disturbing the peace, forcing Leah out of her isolation. You can purchase your copy here.
Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragi-comic new novel follows four Londoners – Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan – as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.
Depicting the modern urban zone – familiar to town-dwellers everywhere – Zadie Smith’s NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.
