Zadie Smith - White Teeth

It would make an interesting survey (what kind would be your decision) to examine the present and divide the onlookers into two groups: those whose eyes fell upon a bleeding man, slumped across a table, and those who watched the getaway of a small brown rebel mouse. Archie, for one, watched the mouse. He watched it stand very still for a second with a smug look as if it expected nothing less. He watched it scurry away, over his hand. He watched it dash along the table, and through the hands of those who wished to pin it down. He watched it leap off the end and disappear through an air vent. Go on my son ! thought Archie.

I am grateful to both Lisa and Joshua Appignanesi for contriving between them to get me a room of my own when it was most required. Thanks are due to Tristan Hughes and Yvonne Bailey-Smith for providing two happy homes for this book and its author. I am also indebted to the bright ideas and sharp eyes of the following people: Paul Hilder, friend and sounding-board; Nicholas Laird, fellow idiot savant ; Donna Poppy, meticulous in everything; Simon Prosser, as judicious an editor as one could hope for; and finally my agent, Georgia Garrett, from whom nothing escapes.

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975 and continues to live in the area. She is the author of two novels. Her first book, White Teeth , was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award. Her second novel, The Autograph Man , is also available as an ePenguin ebook.

The publisher is grateful for permission to reproduce the following extracts:

‘As Time Goes By’, words and music by Herman Hupfeld, copyright 1931 by T. B. Harms Company, all rights assigned to Warner Chappell Music Inc., all rights reserved, lyric reproduced by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd (Carlin), London NW1 8BD, covering the Commonwealth of Nations including Canada, Australasia and Hong Kong, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Africa and Spain only;

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster, Penguin Books, Twentieth-Century Classics edition;

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Penguin Books, Twentieth-Century Classics edition;

‘My Back Pages’ by Bob Dylan, copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc., copyright renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music, all rights reserved, international copyright secured, reprinted by permission;

(p. 228) the Koran, Sura 109 and (p. 501) Sura 52.44, translation by N. J. Dawood, first published by Penguin Books 1956;

(p. 501) the Koran, Sura 52.44 and (p. 501) Sura 52.49 translation by J. M. Rodwell, first published 1861, Orion Publishing Group, Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2E 9EA;

and (p. 502) the Koran, Sura 52.49, translation by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, first published 1930, UBSPD, 5 Ansari Road, New Delhi 110002.