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Dead and Alive: Essays
Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker, TIME, Vanity Fair, and Kirkus Reviews One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025
"Smart, somber . . . There’s pleasure in watching a novelist wired to see all sides at once wrangle with her own dynamic subjectivity."
- The New York Times Book Review
A profound and unparalleled literary voice, Zadie Smith returns with a resounding collection of essays
In this eagerly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years.
She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to New York to reflect on the spontaneous moments that connect us. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North-West London and welcomes us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic – and the meaning of "the commons" in all our lives.
Throughout this thrilling collection, Zadie Smith shows us once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.
"Smart, somber . . . There’s pleasure in watching a novelist wired to see all sides at once wrangle with her own dynamic subjectivity."
- The New York Times Book Review
A profound and unparalleled literary voice, Zadie Smith returns with a resounding collection of essays
In this eagerly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years.
She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to New York to reflect on the spontaneous moments that connect us. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North-West London and welcomes us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic – and the meaning of "the commons" in all our lives.
Throughout this thrilling collection, Zadie Smith shows us once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.
10 pages, Audible Audio
First published October 28, 2025
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About the author
Zadie Smith
116 books16.1k followersZadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
May 30, 2025
I have also tried to leave these essays as wide open as possible... the house of an essay may sometimes be strangely shaped or have a complicated floor plan - but the door is open [...] Reader, I do not know your name - but you are welcome.
But I've learned to think of doubt as an asset. There are some uses to never being satisfied or extremely confident in yourself. You keep trying.
The ending to Smith's introduction quoted above about open doors seems deliberately pointed without being aggressive: these essays are, indeed, welcoming, not didactic, questioning without lacking point and opinion - but in a world that is increasingly hostile to 'others', to alternative views and opinions, it also feels like Smith is laying out her open-armed politics as well as introducing a hospitable book.
Collecting together essays, speeches, articles, and obituaries to writers (Toni Morrison, Martin Amis, Philip Roth, Hilary Mantel, Joan Didion), this is an incisive way in to the mind and world of Smith. The pieces seem to go back to 2019, include some pandemic pieces, and the latest is the hopeful essay written on 4 July 2024 - the date of the UK general election. The subject matter is wonderfully eclectic from essays on visual art, women artists as muses, a defence of urban living, musings on history and the writing of The Fraud to political essays: the climate crisis, Gaza, Tufton Street, capitalism, and the vision of what the current Labour government seems to have forgotten it once stood for.
Through it all is a strong and individual voice and a clear sense of a mind that is still curious and fascinated by our world. Unashamedly left-wing, socialist and multicultural, what strikes me most is the lack of anger here and a narrative of community, vision, ethics and open-hearted humanity. I was a little disappointed in Smith's previous collection Feel Free: Essays which felt a bit constricted and unfinished to me - this one is exactly what I wanted from Smith.
Many thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley
November 12, 2025
Zadie is the absolute greatest. I spent most of today reading this book - such a tremendous collection of essays.
October 12, 2025
As usual I find, with essays, that I really enjoy some and others just don't resonate. I think it would be strange if I was fascinated by everything another human being was fascinated by.
Self Portrait by Celia Paul was a truly intriguing essay about the painter (and muse of Lucien Freud). I knew of Paul but the information and first person narrative was very revealing. I also enjoyed Odutola's Visions of Power about the work of artist, Toyin Ojih Odutola. It's always interesting, to me, to look at the art mentioned as I read. On Tàr, a review of the Cate Blanchett film about a fictional conductor, made me want to watch the movie really badly (and will once I've fewer books to read).
Some started well - the one juxtaposing Michael Jackson and Stormzy - but I got lost. Some went right over my head and some I found baffling.
I did find some sentences quite strange - such as the statement (in the Martin Amis obituary) that when Smith was in her teenage years "all of England's writers were dead ... the only living writer ... was Martin Amis ... Everybody else alive lived in America". I put Smith's teenage years between 1988 and 1997. So clearly Amis' father, Kingsley, didn't count nor did Mantel, Bennett, Keane, McEwan, Barnes and even Rushdie (on and off). It may seem pedantic but it felt like an odd thing to say.
The other strange statement was when she wondered where people could go to lose themselves - an odd statement for a novelist.
Other than those, that obviously stuck in my head, I enjoyed around 60% of the essays particularly the piece on Kara Walker, Agelessness, Black England and Black Manhattan.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the advance review copy.
Self Portrait by Celia Paul was a truly intriguing essay about the painter (and muse of Lucien Freud). I knew of Paul but the information and first person narrative was very revealing. I also enjoyed Odutola's Visions of Power about the work of artist, Toyin Ojih Odutola. It's always interesting, to me, to look at the art mentioned as I read. On Tàr, a review of the Cate Blanchett film about a fictional conductor, made me want to watch the movie really badly (and will once I've fewer books to read).
Some started well - the one juxtaposing Michael Jackson and Stormzy - but I got lost. Some went right over my head and some I found baffling.
I did find some sentences quite strange - such as the statement (in the Martin Amis obituary) that when Smith was in her teenage years "all of England's writers were dead ... the only living writer ... was Martin Amis ... Everybody else alive lived in America". I put Smith's teenage years between 1988 and 1997. So clearly Amis' father, Kingsley, didn't count nor did Mantel, Bennett, Keane, McEwan, Barnes and even Rushdie (on and off). It may seem pedantic but it felt like an odd thing to say.
The other strange statement was when she wondered where people could go to lose themselves - an odd statement for a novelist.
Other than those, that obviously stuck in my head, I enjoyed around 60% of the essays particularly the piece on Kara Walker, Agelessness, Black England and Black Manhattan.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the advance review copy.
November 12, 2025
I think it's very easy to not understand Zadie Smith. It would be true to call her left-wing, activist, anti-colonial, black British, educated progressive, but these labels are a crude measure of her intellectual profile. She is a writer, and as a writer, she is curious about the world and about others' mental lives, and she wants to think about people, not glibly render judgment on their politics. Read as a whole, these essays show a social commentator willing to throw herself into any polemical conflict—but not willing to crouch in a trench and stay put on one side. She is both vanguard and old-guard, a believer in liberal values but not prepared to jettison the literary canon or her cultural patrimony. She is still that precocious upstart who wrote White Teeth, but in many ways, she is also surprisingly revanchist.
There's a certain whiplash from one essay to the next. In one essay, she decries the misogyny of Lucian Freud, an artist whose career exploited and erased his female subjects and their own artistic ambitions; in another essay, she is celebrating her close friendship with Philip Roth and extolling his wide breadth of erudition. She clearly likes literary bad boys—she was friends with Martin Amis, as well. She has no allegiance to one generation or movement. In one essay, she writes in support of pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses and the civic value of their youthful stance against an adult status quo and indifference; in a review of the film Tár, she is lamenting the naive young student who condemns Bach as a misogynist and then storms out of the room. But Zadie Smith has little sympathy with this callow bluster: "I'm the one severely triggered by statements like 'Chaucer is misogynistic' or 'Virginia Woolf was a racist'. Not because I can't see that both statements are partially true but because I am of that generation whose only real shibboleth was: 'Is it interesting?'" But it's unclear, here and in any essay, which generation she really belongs to.
Zadie Smith, naturally, questions all shibboleths, platitudes, truisms, or what she calls, 'containers'. In perhaps her finest essay, "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction", Zadie Smith argues that the value of fiction resides in its ability to show us a new consciousness of the world, to see and imagine and inhabit the minds of people totally different from ourselves. She takes issue at those who believe we can only write from experience, as if only a black woman could write of black, female experience, or only a gay man could write of the gay, male experience. Such a belief would only circumscribe the human experience to a set of unimaginative caricatures and boring monoliths (as if black women think one way and gay men act one way). Walt Whitman famously wrote "I contain multitudes"—and Zadie Smith agrees that this is the right statement of common humanity, but she also suggests that we all discard the idea of "containing" people. We should be more porous, more open to the possibility of what human life can be, and we should let fiction liberate us from the carceral silos of identity politics.
Her weakest, and perhaps most controversial, essay is, ironically, "Shibboleth". Commenting on the campus protests over the Israel-Palestine conflict, Zadie Smith reflects on how language is euphemized and weaponized by political shorthands and simple slogans. It's easy to say 'Hamas'. It's easy to say 'Zionist colonialist state'. It's easy to utter a slogan like 'There is no such thing as the Palestinian people'. But as Zadie Smith argues, these reduce a complex people and intractable history into simple formulas. I agree to some extent, especially when I see these words echoed online and unmoored from reality. They are, in her view, more tribal calls than real policy statements. But I think there is a little bit of Periclean grandstanding here. After she meekly celebrates campus protesters and then pooh-poohs the academic jargon and political terms of debate, she invokes the nameless and numberless dead and calls for a ceasefire. I have no truck with ceasefires—but there is a certain degree of linguistic hypocrisy here as she summons the dead and transforms them into a plea: ceasefire. Naturally, however, one would have to wonder about the terms and durability of a ceasefire, the compromise and fallout involved, the strategic loss and longterm sufferings—on both sides. It's easy to invoke the dead in an argument. They cannot speak to correct you.
"Put me wherever you want," she says in the same article, "misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naive novelist, useful idiot, apologist, denier, ally, contrarian, collaborator, traitor, inexcusable coward." It's a sardonic kind of self-labelling, cloaking herself in all the invectives you can imagine for a progressive turncoat (except, obviously, the word turncoat), but that's the point. She never quite conforms to the creeds and language of progressive orthodoxy, and no label really fits. I wouldn't call her anything but a writer, one perhaps most like her literary heroes—James Baldwin and Joan Didion, two authors who are incredibly hard to pin down, both refusing to belong to or follow a single movement.
There's a certain whiplash from one essay to the next. In one essay, she decries the misogyny of Lucian Freud, an artist whose career exploited and erased his female subjects and their own artistic ambitions; in another essay, she is celebrating her close friendship with Philip Roth and extolling his wide breadth of erudition. She clearly likes literary bad boys—she was friends with Martin Amis, as well. She has no allegiance to one generation or movement. In one essay, she writes in support of pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses and the civic value of their youthful stance against an adult status quo and indifference; in a review of the film Tár, she is lamenting the naive young student who condemns Bach as a misogynist and then storms out of the room. But Zadie Smith has little sympathy with this callow bluster: "I'm the one severely triggered by statements like 'Chaucer is misogynistic' or 'Virginia Woolf was a racist'. Not because I can't see that both statements are partially true but because I am of that generation whose only real shibboleth was: 'Is it interesting?'" But it's unclear, here and in any essay, which generation she really belongs to.
Zadie Smith, naturally, questions all shibboleths, platitudes, truisms, or what she calls, 'containers'. In perhaps her finest essay, "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction", Zadie Smith argues that the value of fiction resides in its ability to show us a new consciousness of the world, to see and imagine and inhabit the minds of people totally different from ourselves. She takes issue at those who believe we can only write from experience, as if only a black woman could write of black, female experience, or only a gay man could write of the gay, male experience. Such a belief would only circumscribe the human experience to a set of unimaginative caricatures and boring monoliths (as if black women think one way and gay men act one way). Walt Whitman famously wrote "I contain multitudes"—and Zadie Smith agrees that this is the right statement of common humanity, but she also suggests that we all discard the idea of "containing" people. We should be more porous, more open to the possibility of what human life can be, and we should let fiction liberate us from the carceral silos of identity politics.
Her weakest, and perhaps most controversial, essay is, ironically, "Shibboleth". Commenting on the campus protests over the Israel-Palestine conflict, Zadie Smith reflects on how language is euphemized and weaponized by political shorthands and simple slogans. It's easy to say 'Hamas'. It's easy to say 'Zionist colonialist state'. It's easy to utter a slogan like 'There is no such thing as the Palestinian people'. But as Zadie Smith argues, these reduce a complex people and intractable history into simple formulas. I agree to some extent, especially when I see these words echoed online and unmoored from reality. They are, in her view, more tribal calls than real policy statements. But I think there is a little bit of Periclean grandstanding here. After she meekly celebrates campus protesters and then pooh-poohs the academic jargon and political terms of debate, she invokes the nameless and numberless dead and calls for a ceasefire. I have no truck with ceasefires—but there is a certain degree of linguistic hypocrisy here as she summons the dead and transforms them into a plea: ceasefire. Naturally, however, one would have to wonder about the terms and durability of a ceasefire, the compromise and fallout involved, the strategic loss and longterm sufferings—on both sides. It's easy to invoke the dead in an argument. They cannot speak to correct you.
"Put me wherever you want," she says in the same article, "misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naive novelist, useful idiot, apologist, denier, ally, contrarian, collaborator, traitor, inexcusable coward." It's a sardonic kind of self-labelling, cloaking herself in all the invectives you can imagine for a progressive turncoat (except, obviously, the word turncoat), but that's the point. She never quite conforms to the creeds and language of progressive orthodoxy, and no label really fits. I wouldn't call her anything but a writer, one perhaps most like her literary heroes—James Baldwin and Joan Didion, two authors who are incredibly hard to pin down, both refusing to belong to or follow a single movement.
November 22, 2025
A triumph. Her musings on time and age in particular hit home.
September 14, 2025
Zadie! Yes! She is an amazing thinker and an impressive writer. A great, yes I said great collection of essays that are arranged cohesively making this an exceptional reading experience. Her thoughts on being a writer and the writing process were very illuminating. Her pieces on art, particularly Kara Walker has given me a new appreciation for art and how I’ll view it moving forward. Parts IV and V, Mourning and Confessing were standouts for me. All throughout this collection Zadie’s talent with the pen is on full display. I think she is deserving for a place in my prosey posse. Stay tuned! Book will be available October 28, 2025
November 23, 2025
Time spent in Zadie Smith’s mind is always the time well spent
July 12, 2025
I have read Zadie Smith in the past, enjoyed her stories, and Iove her writing style, but this was absolutely stunning. I really enjoyed the eclectic scope of essays. From the film, Tar, Hilary Mantel, social media, to politics and more, It was almost as if Zadie wrote this book with my own interests in mind. That’s how much I loved it.
This read FRESH, I know such topics have been touched on before but not like this. I honestly didn’t have any wild expectations when I started but I can honestly say I am buying a copy for myself and others. It was the boost I didn’t know I needed.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK - Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Penguin Life, Penguin Business for this ARC.
This read FRESH, I know such topics have been touched on before but not like this. I honestly didn’t have any wild expectations when I started but I can honestly say I am buying a copy for myself and others. It was the boost I didn’t know I needed.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK - Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Penguin Life, Penguin Business for this ARC.
December 23, 2025
Woah. What an absolute intellectual beast Smith is. Although I dipped in and out of these pieces over the course of a month, and even though I was never exactly sure what the hell Smith was on about, her essays were incredibly rich, dense in cultural criticism, and gave my brain a spa now that I’m freshly out of my doomscrolling era.
I love how the book opens with the idea that a collection of essays is like a guided tour through a museum. It gives us readers the choice to play around and find pieces that spark intrigue. And through all of it, Smith’s voice as the tour guide, her know-it-all, unsolicited comments is like a magnet that attracts you to topics that you’ve never cared about before. I find this very similar to David Foster Wallace; I don’t like lobster that much, and definitely wouldn’t go to the Maine Lobster Festival in my spare time, but DFW has given me strong feelings about both. With Smith, the same goes for Todd Haynes’ Tár, or the life of Celia Paul, or some random AI video that Trump made about his future for Gaza.
I cannot wait to spend more time in Zadie Smith’s brain.
I love how the book opens with the idea that a collection of essays is like a guided tour through a museum. It gives us readers the choice to play around and find pieces that spark intrigue. And through all of it, Smith’s voice as the tour guide, her know-it-all, unsolicited comments is like a magnet that attracts you to topics that you’ve never cared about before. I find this very similar to David Foster Wallace; I don’t like lobster that much, and definitely wouldn’t go to the Maine Lobster Festival in my spare time, but DFW has given me strong feelings about both. With Smith, the same goes for Todd Haynes’ Tár, or the life of Celia Paul, or some random AI video that Trump made about his future for Gaza.
I cannot wait to spend more time in Zadie Smith’s brain.
November 23, 2025
If it's written by Zadie Smith, I'm going to read it, fiction or non fiction. I will even read it if I'm not particularly interested in the subject, because her interest will interest me.
I found something to admire and to ponder in each of these essays, but was fascinated by 3 in particular:
- Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction
- Some Notes on Mediated Time
- The Dream of the Raised Arm
My fantasy dinner party would be incomplete if Zadie couldn't make it.
I found something to admire and to ponder in each of these essays, but was fascinated by 3 in particular:
- Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction
- Some Notes on Mediated Time
- The Dream of the Raised Arm
My fantasy dinner party would be incomplete if Zadie couldn't make it.
October 29, 2025
Out now!
My favorite of the incomparable Zadie Smith’s essay collections: the tightest and most current (at least, current according to when I read them all).
My favorite of the incomparable Zadie Smith’s essay collections: the tightest and most current (at least, current according to when I read them all).
November 29, 2025
Smith compiles her essays on arts (e.g., creative writing, visual arts) and politics (i.e., distribution of wealth and power across different classes, genders, and races) in Dead and Alive. Her “you catch more with honey” tone is not only a compelling tactic; what strikes me most is how she also presents her opinions with a distinguished air of wisdom and situatedness that makes a reader want to lean in, listen closely, and learn from. Perhaps Smith’s appreciative section on her literary heroes in Part IV best exemplifies this. I could keep celebrating her sources of inspiration if she were to publish an entire book on the writers she respects.
October 28, 2025
Given that I had not then liked “The Fraud” all that much, this collection of essays reconciled me with my idea of Zadie Smith. The part I enjoyed the most was clearly the one on the Obituaries of some famous writers, on which I agree with most of Smith's opinions, although I have a huge gap to fill as far as Hilary Mantel is concerned. The couple of essays that refer to the pandemic however, always have the effect of a dystopia for me, as if I can't believe we survived that too....
Considerato che "The Fraud" non mi era poi piaciuto tantissimo, questa raccolta di saggi mi ha riconciliato con la mia idea di Zadie Smith. La parte che mi é piaciuta di piú é stata chiaramente quella sugli Obituaries di alcuni famosi scrittori, sui quali condivido la maggior parte delle opinioni della Smith, pur avendo una grandissima lacuna da colmare per quello che riguarda Hilary Mantel. Il paio di saggi che fanno riferimento alla pandemia comunque, mi fanno sempre l'effetto di una distopia, come se non riuscissi a crederci che siamo sopravvissuti anche a questo...
I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.
Considerato che "The Fraud" non mi era poi piaciuto tantissimo, questa raccolta di saggi mi ha riconciliato con la mia idea di Zadie Smith. La parte che mi é piaciuta di piú é stata chiaramente quella sugli Obituaries di alcuni famosi scrittori, sui quali condivido la maggior parte delle opinioni della Smith, pur avendo una grandissima lacuna da colmare per quello che riguarda Hilary Mantel. Il paio di saggi che fanno riferimento alla pandemia comunque, mi fanno sempre l'effetto di una distopia, come se non riuscissi a crederci che siamo sopravvissuti anche a questo...
I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.
December 19, 2025
This was my first foray into Zadie Smith and I thoroughly loved it. I have subconsciously avoided her books, though I have seen them at bookstores a lot. And unfortunately my introduction to her was via a critical essay by Andrea Long Chu, whereby, she highlighted how Zadie would be team neutral, even when it has to do with genocide or other areas that do deserve a more clearer stance. I will say - the essays about the Gaza crisis and Trump’s AI video about Gaza revamp - didn’t help at all. I’ll get it out of the way, but at times I found Zadie extremely cautious around more thornier topics and it can come off very disingenuous and passive that a reader is left to wonder- does she actually stand for anything? Due to not being able to make her mark at times, she ends up using far much more words than necessary. However, this was my biggest issue and now that it is out of the way, the good stuff.
I did find vast majority of the remaining essays quite brilliant. She has a humungous appetite - visual arts, authors, introspection, consciousness, mourning and much, much more. And I love when with a lot of these, she stays with them very delicately to build a world. Such as her perspective of her once trying to commit suicide (or what is an accident, she herself isn’t quite so sure). Or what happens with youth back when she was in her youth, versus the youth now who have access to infinite amount of internet and who are valued at $270 LTV (lifetime value) by Facebook per teenager. These are intricate, complex and worthy of our attention- yet most people ignore such topics in favor for whatever is more popular. Yet she pleads, to not let our consciousness be driven by large corporations and models. To allow our imagination and consciousness to have its freedom and resist the attention economy. Through and through, in a lot of these essays, you can tell there’s a certain critical eye she leaves for herself - which gives this book a warm texture, that’s definitely her signature voice (something she mentions - how she can tell when it’s a James Baldwin writing, versus Toni Morrison).
I highly recommend this book.
I did find vast majority of the remaining essays quite brilliant. She has a humungous appetite - visual arts, authors, introspection, consciousness, mourning and much, much more. And I love when with a lot of these, she stays with them very delicately to build a world. Such as her perspective of her once trying to commit suicide (or what is an accident, she herself isn’t quite so sure). Or what happens with youth back when she was in her youth, versus the youth now who have access to infinite amount of internet and who are valued at $270 LTV (lifetime value) by Facebook per teenager. These are intricate, complex and worthy of our attention- yet most people ignore such topics in favor for whatever is more popular. Yet she pleads, to not let our consciousness be driven by large corporations and models. To allow our imagination and consciousness to have its freedom and resist the attention economy. Through and through, in a lot of these essays, you can tell there’s a certain critical eye she leaves for herself - which gives this book a warm texture, that’s definitely her signature voice (something she mentions - how she can tell when it’s a James Baldwin writing, versus Toni Morrison).
I highly recommend this book.
June 11, 2025
*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review*.
Dead and Alive is a new collection of essays by Zadie Smith. Smith writes on many topics including Celia Paul, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth II, New York, being a writer and there are some memorial pieces on authors who have died such as Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Martin Amis and Hilary Mantel.
This essay collection was truly phenomenal and I loved every second. Since finishing the essays I keep thinking about this collection as a whole and I feel so much towards it. This is a must read for anyone who likes reading essays/commentary. I loved reading the essays on mourning with the one on Joan Didion being a favourite. I also loved reading about the Egyptian novelist, Ahmed Naji. The commentary on phones and social media was particularly impactful and I just think this whole collection was so strong. Zadie Smith is not afraid to say what she believes in and I’m going to be thinking about this collection for a long time.
Favourite Quotes:
“The dream of Frantz Fanon was not the replacement of one unjust power with another unjust power; it was a revolutionary humanism, neither assimilationist nor supremacist, in which the Manichaean logic of dominant/ submissive as it applies to people is finally and completely dismantled, and the right of every being to its dignity is recognized. That is decolonization.”
AND
“We pity the olden-day people who didn't realize how not OK or out of touch their sentences were because no one was there to tell them so moments after they'd written them. As if the centuries of writing prior to 2008 - and all those naive oldey-timey artists who did not have access, moment by moment to the general mood - were by definition irresponsible!”
Dead and Alive is a new collection of essays by Zadie Smith. Smith writes on many topics including Celia Paul, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth II, New York, being a writer and there are some memorial pieces on authors who have died such as Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Martin Amis and Hilary Mantel.
This essay collection was truly phenomenal and I loved every second. Since finishing the essays I keep thinking about this collection as a whole and I feel so much towards it. This is a must read for anyone who likes reading essays/commentary. I loved reading the essays on mourning with the one on Joan Didion being a favourite. I also loved reading about the Egyptian novelist, Ahmed Naji. The commentary on phones and social media was particularly impactful and I just think this whole collection was so strong. Zadie Smith is not afraid to say what she believes in and I’m going to be thinking about this collection for a long time.
Favourite Quotes:
“The dream of Frantz Fanon was not the replacement of one unjust power with another unjust power; it was a revolutionary humanism, neither assimilationist nor supremacist, in which the Manichaean logic of dominant/ submissive as it applies to people is finally and completely dismantled, and the right of every being to its dignity is recognized. That is decolonization.”
AND
“We pity the olden-day people who didn't realize how not OK or out of touch their sentences were because no one was there to tell them so moments after they'd written them. As if the centuries of writing prior to 2008 - and all those naive oldey-timey artists who did not have access, moment by moment to the general mood - were by definition irresponsible!”
November 19, 2025
Zadie Smith’s essays are subtle, smart and self aware. This book contains the most nuanced and unflinching essay I have ever read about the concept of cultural appropriation, deeply thought and sure to discomfit anyone, no matter what side of the debate we think we’re on. Indeed, an underlying theme of the book is the paucity of the concept of debate as played out on social media. Smith is aware of the shibboleths we all use to identify our group and make ourselves comfortable and pushes back against this with true moral courage.
This book made me feel very interested in things I did not expect to be interested in, most notably the career of artist Celia Paul.
Smith is a wonderful companion through it all. She lays out devastating logical arguments - for example, about the villainy of our attitudes toward the environment - alongside sly acknowledgement of a sort of hypocrisy common to us all - her comments on her own use of plastic water bottles hit close to home.
She is amazing when discussing James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Hillary Mantel.
I am afraid to say this is the first full length book I have read by Smith. I have only previously encountered essays here and there. I need to fix this. She’s amazing.
This book made me feel very interested in things I did not expect to be interested in, most notably the career of artist Celia Paul.
Smith is a wonderful companion through it all. She lays out devastating logical arguments - for example, about the villainy of our attitudes toward the environment - alongside sly acknowledgement of a sort of hypocrisy common to us all - her comments on her own use of plastic water bottles hit close to home.
She is amazing when discussing James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Hillary Mantel.
I am afraid to say this is the first full length book I have read by Smith. I have only previously encountered essays here and there. I need to fix this. She’s amazing.
December 20, 2025
This is a collection of essays, forewords and introductions, speeches, obituaries, and interviews. They’re loosely connected, but all filtered through Zadie Smith’s voice and worldview. A lot of these pieces made me immediately seek out the work she’s responding to. My TBR grew, my watch list grew, and I waslooking up art, films, and podcasts as I went. It forces you to sit with colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, feminism, and culture more broadly, approached from different angles and levels of intimacy. I wish I had a physical copy. This is not an end-to-end, power-through kind of book, it didn’t suit the ebook review format I had. It is an easy recommendation for thoughtful, bite-sized essays that double as excellent discussion starters. Lucian Freud: hate it. Tár: now I’m desperate to see it. Stormzy: give me more. Kara Walker: awe, moving, haunting. Las Culturistas: love finding another Reader. Joan Didion: yes. Toni Morrison: always yes. Overall, read it, take notes, and let it take you well beyond the bounds of these pages.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for access to this book.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for access to this book.
November 21, 2025
I usually visit essays or short stories between novels, but I couldn't help but give this my full attention essay by essay. Each time I would finish an essay I would close the book, and bask in a state of admiration for Zadie Smith. Oh and how humbling she is to read! There were a good amount of references, or even full on essays that I knew nothing about. I never watched the movie or heard of the artist, but it didn't really matter. For me, it was less about the content, and more about the way Zadie Smith thinks. I mean, its also about the content, but I feet like Zadie could take just about anything and create a dialogue about our culture, or better yet about humanity.
November 24, 2025
3.5
I really enjoyed some of these essays, in particular the ones about other writers, like Joan Didion and Toni Morrison, as well as Hilary Mantel. Some of the other essays, on current events, felt a bit more clumsy, a bit too chatty and without (I thought) bringing anything particularly new or original. I like her writing and her style though and found them pleasant to read.
Free ARC sent by Netgalley.
I really enjoyed some of these essays, in particular the ones about other writers, like Joan Didion and Toni Morrison, as well as Hilary Mantel. Some of the other essays, on current events, felt a bit more clumsy, a bit too chatty and without (I thought) bringing anything particularly new or original. I like her writing and her style though and found them pleasant to read.
Free ARC sent by Netgalley.
November 16, 2025
Great writing on a large number of topics of interest,
December 2, 2025
Smith is a delight when she talks about writing or the arts, and full of cliches when her subject is politics.
November 9, 2025
4.5 stars
December 4, 2025
She doesnt have It anymore
December 21, 2025
A great mind. A writer who just excels at the essay. I wouldn’t say her essays are better than her novels, but her voice in both of these forms bear no resemblance to one another. She seems to have fiction mode and non-fiction mode, and both are a pleasure to read.
November 16, 2025
Zadie Smith is a prolific writer, & I generally find her work to be profound & quite well thought-out. I was therefore, a bit surprised by how preachy I found this collection of essays. I was even more so surprised by the holier-than-thou attitude connected with her thoughts on the Israel/Palestine conflict — though she continuously claims throughout the piece that she has not chosen a side. As someone who has the capacity to reach the audience that she does, I think she has an obligation to be more careful in denouncing an entire ethnicity. I am not certain why she felt that this subject was within her purview, but as someone who was directly impacted by the effects of October 7th & thereafter — not indirectly, not ‘being so proud of violent protests taking place on college campuses’ — I wish she had chosen to keep her opinions on the righteousness of harming others in pursuit of revolution to herself.
September 5, 2025
3.5 stars
Thanks to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I blow hot and cold with Zadie's books; some I like and some I don't. But I can't deny her ability to write. I haven't read any of her non-fiction before. I know at times she can be seen as a controversial figure, but I do try to separate art from artist the best I can, and I was intrigued what I'd find in these essays. So I tried to clear all of my expectations before going in.
The digital copy I had had some slight formatting issues and so I cannot comment on how it'll be formatted within the published book.
I struggled a bit with something but I'm not completely sure how you would fix it. But I struggled to really follow some of it because I didn't have the background context. It was like you need some extra information before you read it to fully understand it. Having said that, unless you're going to keep your essays to yourself there's always going to be someone who doesn't understand 100% of what's going on. So I sort of had to try and let that go ad just enjoy it for its written quality.
I think this is best read by true fans of her. I think they'd appreciate it more. Whereas I didn't have a real emotional connection to it.
She has really opened up her arms to the reader and given them such a broad range of topics. We've got everything from art to beliefs and travelling, obituaries, identity, and the art of writing - there's probably no read who won't find something to relate to or enjoy.
She has pointed out early on that, whilst they are her essays, she has invited the readers to take what they want from them, to agree or disagree, to make their own decisions, rather than saying "this is what I think and therefore you have to think that too."
It's an interesting collection that I think most will enjoy, but I'm on the fence about it. Big fans of hers will love it. If you've got negative opinions on her then definitely not. But if you're like me and on the fence...would I recommend it? After some thought, yes I would. It puts her in a new light. We read these books, we think we know our favourite authors, but we don't. By publishing such a personal collection, Zadie has given us a chance to get to know her better. Whether you end up more towards the positive or negative view on her, that's up to you. But I think she raises some interesting points, and she has proven once again that she really is a phenomenal writer and user of language.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I blow hot and cold with Zadie's books; some I like and some I don't. But I can't deny her ability to write. I haven't read any of her non-fiction before. I know at times she can be seen as a controversial figure, but I do try to separate art from artist the best I can, and I was intrigued what I'd find in these essays. So I tried to clear all of my expectations before going in.
The digital copy I had had some slight formatting issues and so I cannot comment on how it'll be formatted within the published book.
I struggled a bit with something but I'm not completely sure how you would fix it. But I struggled to really follow some of it because I didn't have the background context. It was like you need some extra information before you read it to fully understand it. Having said that, unless you're going to keep your essays to yourself there's always going to be someone who doesn't understand 100% of what's going on. So I sort of had to try and let that go ad just enjoy it for its written quality.
I think this is best read by true fans of her. I think they'd appreciate it more. Whereas I didn't have a real emotional connection to it.
She has really opened up her arms to the reader and given them such a broad range of topics. We've got everything from art to beliefs and travelling, obituaries, identity, and the art of writing - there's probably no read who won't find something to relate to or enjoy.
She has pointed out early on that, whilst they are her essays, she has invited the readers to take what they want from them, to agree or disagree, to make their own decisions, rather than saying "this is what I think and therefore you have to think that too."
It's an interesting collection that I think most will enjoy, but I'm on the fence about it. Big fans of hers will love it. If you've got negative opinions on her then definitely not. But if you're like me and on the fence...would I recommend it? After some thought, yes I would. It puts her in a new light. We read these books, we think we know our favourite authors, but we don't. By publishing such a personal collection, Zadie has given us a chance to get to know her better. Whether you end up more towards the positive or negative view on her, that's up to you. But I think she raises some interesting points, and she has proven once again that she really is a phenomenal writer and user of language.
July 28, 2025
Reading into someone’s collection of essays, especially those that are rich and wide-reaching in its subjects, is like stepping into said person’s mind. And in this case, it was quite delightful. From eyeballing art, to considering cities and countries, to reconsidering those places (and perhaps our own convictions and beliefs), to mourning talented souls that have passed before us, and confessing what writing is among others… It is honest, argumentative, it can be defensive at times, but hey, I guess that’s what peeking into someone’s mind will feel like, and perhaps if there is a constant throughout is that you can tell Smith is not one to not write what she thinks as clearly as she can.
As with collections of anything, I enjoyed some more than the others. The first part, Eyeballing, was close to being my favourite, due to its subject of interest. Think going into a museum, or a cinema, or a live concert, then afterwards having a very good conversation with someone about how that work relates to philosophy, questioning oppression, decolonisation, that makes you think and appreciate the work even more than you already were. Zadie Smith turns works of art - and arguably, the artists themselves - into a deep study. Upon reflecting on Toyin Ojih Odutola’s work, she wrote:
"We know we don’t want to be victims of history. We know we refuse to be slaves. But do we want to be masters – to behave like masters? To expect as they expect? To be as tranquil and entitled as they are? To claim as righteous our decision not to include them in our human considerations? Are we content that all our attacks on them be ad hominem, as they once spoke of us?"
The second part, Considering, while the essay on Tar is the one that explicitly discusses generational clash, Fascinated to Presume: In Defence of Fiction is where I’m most grateful for a view that I wasn’t familiar with. She wrote,
"What would our debates about fiction look like, I sometimes wonder, if our preferred verbal container for the phenomenon of writing about others was not ‘cultural appropriation’ but rather ‘interpersonal voyeurism’ or ‘profound other-fascination’ or even ‘cross-epidermal reanimation’?"
Also, what is it about cities that makes writers - and all of us frankly - go ohh and ahh? Here, Smith discusses New York (in the wake of a killing in Halloween 2017), Egypt and the campaign to release the novelist Ahmed Naji. Some Notes on Mediated Time – I was excited for the opening paragraphs of this, but it turned out to be on the algorithm and how much the internet takes hold of our lives right now, which isn’t bad, but is a slight detour from mediating about growing old.
The third part: Reconsidering - I don’t know how I feel about the one essay on Gaza… and she made it clear that she doesn’t care what people think. She wrote: It is my view that my personal views have no more weight than an ear of corn in this particular essay – but is that true? Considering being one of the most influential writers now, really does she think it doesn’t carry any weight?
Lastly, on Confessing, which is the last part. In one of the essays, Smith reflects on being given the award for literary service, while she had avoided any service, joint letters, campaigns, and other things that are not writing. At this point in the book, you would have picked it up, and truly it stacked up with the things she’s written about herself and her view in the previous essays. I admire the essays in this chapter too, for her love and obsession towards writing just shine throughout.
"Art is one of the ways we reveal the peculiarities of consciousness – for me it’s the clearest way. It’s through other people’s novels, other people’s paintings, other people’s poems and other people’s music that I am made aware that everybody is not like anyone else."
It was an interesting and quite broad collection of essays. And as Smith herself wrote in the foreword, as a reader, we have the absolute freedom to wander around this book.
Thanks to Penguin for the ARC via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
As with collections of anything, I enjoyed some more than the others. The first part, Eyeballing, was close to being my favourite, due to its subject of interest. Think going into a museum, or a cinema, or a live concert, then afterwards having a very good conversation with someone about how that work relates to philosophy, questioning oppression, decolonisation, that makes you think and appreciate the work even more than you already were. Zadie Smith turns works of art - and arguably, the artists themselves - into a deep study. Upon reflecting on Toyin Ojih Odutola’s work, she wrote:
"We know we don’t want to be victims of history. We know we refuse to be slaves. But do we want to be masters – to behave like masters? To expect as they expect? To be as tranquil and entitled as they are? To claim as righteous our decision not to include them in our human considerations? Are we content that all our attacks on them be ad hominem, as they once spoke of us?"
The second part, Considering, while the essay on Tar is the one that explicitly discusses generational clash, Fascinated to Presume: In Defence of Fiction is where I’m most grateful for a view that I wasn’t familiar with. She wrote,
"What would our debates about fiction look like, I sometimes wonder, if our preferred verbal container for the phenomenon of writing about others was not ‘cultural appropriation’ but rather ‘interpersonal voyeurism’ or ‘profound other-fascination’ or even ‘cross-epidermal reanimation’?"
Also, what is it about cities that makes writers - and all of us frankly - go ohh and ahh? Here, Smith discusses New York (in the wake of a killing in Halloween 2017), Egypt and the campaign to release the novelist Ahmed Naji. Some Notes on Mediated Time – I was excited for the opening paragraphs of this, but it turned out to be on the algorithm and how much the internet takes hold of our lives right now, which isn’t bad, but is a slight detour from mediating about growing old.
The third part: Reconsidering - I don’t know how I feel about the one essay on Gaza… and she made it clear that she doesn’t care what people think. She wrote: It is my view that my personal views have no more weight than an ear of corn in this particular essay – but is that true? Considering being one of the most influential writers now, really does she think it doesn’t carry any weight?
Lastly, on Confessing, which is the last part. In one of the essays, Smith reflects on being given the award for literary service, while she had avoided any service, joint letters, campaigns, and other things that are not writing. At this point in the book, you would have picked it up, and truly it stacked up with the things she’s written about herself and her view in the previous essays. I admire the essays in this chapter too, for her love and obsession towards writing just shine throughout.
"Art is one of the ways we reveal the peculiarities of consciousness – for me it’s the clearest way. It’s through other people’s novels, other people’s paintings, other people’s poems and other people’s music that I am made aware that everybody is not like anyone else."
It was an interesting and quite broad collection of essays. And as Smith herself wrote in the foreword, as a reader, we have the absolute freedom to wander around this book.
Thanks to Penguin for the ARC via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
November 3, 2025
In a kind and welcoming foreword, Zadie Smith offers us options for reading DEAD AND ALIVE. Just head to page one, then onward. Choose subjects from the Table of Contents. Revisit an old essay and see how it has fared. No one was more grateful for this latitude than me. I was impressed by the depth and width of her topics, acquaintances, engagements and comments on our disconcerting days.
I began with “The Fall,” which was written for The New Yorker in November 2023 and is about Smith’s teenage years. Smith had been thinking about teenagers lately since she had one herself now. She watched teenage girls make choices between Barbie and Oppenheimer, and she compared the two films: brittle, impossible perfection on the one hand, apocalypse on the other. It recalled her girlhood memories that stretched between the two extremes.
The “fall” itself was the slipping/sliding/letting go from her bedroom windowsill and crashing 40 feet below into her Pakistani neighbor’s small yard. She was badly injured, on crutches for a long time, and felt faintly ridiculous. This feeling was all part of being a buck-toothed brown girl who fell out of her own home. (She also wore one red shoe, one white. She claimed to have seen movies she had not. She was 15.) Eventually she took this teenage misery back to her “foetid” armchair, and she questioned her admiration for Holden Caulfield and his eternal catching in the rye. She opened a book and retreated.
In another essay, “A Speech for the Kenyon Review,” given on November 8, 2024, Smith accepted the Award for Literary Achievement in third person. The speech itself was gracious and short. She devoted the remaining nine minutes (she had been given 10) to retelling Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” She analyzed Mr. Shiftlet, the villain, comparing his character to the president Americans had just voted into office. She connected good people who believe themselves decent to the mother, the elder Lucynell.
Finally, Smith explained the last group, the young Lucynells, as truly afflicted people who struggle and rely on others to fashion a tolerable world. Right now, it feels like the Mr. Shiftlets are ascendent, and we have abandoned the weakest among us. She encouraged us not to do that. She closed with a quotation from O’Connor herself: “[Y]ou have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.”
“Under the Banner of New York” was written in response to Halloween 2017 when a trucker drove down the West Side Highway and deliberately killed eight people. The essay is a tribute to both the predictable routines of life in cities and the people who come together in an emergency, work together to settle the situation, and, having other places to be, go on their way. Smith uses an example from her life when an elderly Chinese woman had fallen in her neighborhood, dropping her bags of accumulated trash. She had been part of an extremely diverse squad who put the lady back on her feet, checked her ankles, and chased down the tin cans and bottles. One found her hat, another retied her shoelaces, and then all vanished. The only thing the New Yorkers had in common was compassion. And then flight.
New Yorkers notice one another, perhaps even count on one another, but there are no dwelling-upon identities or “let’s get to know one another” sentiments. She uses and resonates with a line from Nick Laird’s poem, “New York Elasticity”: “something of this city’s brute capacity for gathering is like a shining in my head.” Smith rejoiced in that phrase and said that the New York she writes about is so elastic that it means nothing at all. The capacity to gather without precise definition is a form of freedom that cities understand and use.
Many more people of all stripes and abilities meet up with Zadie Smith in DEAD AND ALIVE. She sees and embraces strength, artistry and decency, and I welcome her help in understanding our world.
Reviewed by Jane T. Krebs
I began with “The Fall,” which was written for The New Yorker in November 2023 and is about Smith’s teenage years. Smith had been thinking about teenagers lately since she had one herself now. She watched teenage girls make choices between Barbie and Oppenheimer, and she compared the two films: brittle, impossible perfection on the one hand, apocalypse on the other. It recalled her girlhood memories that stretched between the two extremes.
The “fall” itself was the slipping/sliding/letting go from her bedroom windowsill and crashing 40 feet below into her Pakistani neighbor’s small yard. She was badly injured, on crutches for a long time, and felt faintly ridiculous. This feeling was all part of being a buck-toothed brown girl who fell out of her own home. (She also wore one red shoe, one white. She claimed to have seen movies she had not. She was 15.) Eventually she took this teenage misery back to her “foetid” armchair, and she questioned her admiration for Holden Caulfield and his eternal catching in the rye. She opened a book and retreated.
In another essay, “A Speech for the Kenyon Review,” given on November 8, 2024, Smith accepted the Award for Literary Achievement in third person. The speech itself was gracious and short. She devoted the remaining nine minutes (she had been given 10) to retelling Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” She analyzed Mr. Shiftlet, the villain, comparing his character to the president Americans had just voted into office. She connected good people who believe themselves decent to the mother, the elder Lucynell.
Finally, Smith explained the last group, the young Lucynells, as truly afflicted people who struggle and rely on others to fashion a tolerable world. Right now, it feels like the Mr. Shiftlets are ascendent, and we have abandoned the weakest among us. She encouraged us not to do that. She closed with a quotation from O’Connor herself: “[Y]ou have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.”
“Under the Banner of New York” was written in response to Halloween 2017 when a trucker drove down the West Side Highway and deliberately killed eight people. The essay is a tribute to both the predictable routines of life in cities and the people who come together in an emergency, work together to settle the situation, and, having other places to be, go on their way. Smith uses an example from her life when an elderly Chinese woman had fallen in her neighborhood, dropping her bags of accumulated trash. She had been part of an extremely diverse squad who put the lady back on her feet, checked her ankles, and chased down the tin cans and bottles. One found her hat, another retied her shoelaces, and then all vanished. The only thing the New Yorkers had in common was compassion. And then flight.
New Yorkers notice one another, perhaps even count on one another, but there are no dwelling-upon identities or “let’s get to know one another” sentiments. She uses and resonates with a line from Nick Laird’s poem, “New York Elasticity”: “something of this city’s brute capacity for gathering is like a shining in my head.” Smith rejoiced in that phrase and said that the New York she writes about is so elastic that it means nothing at all. The capacity to gather without precise definition is a form of freedom that cities understand and use.
Many more people of all stripes and abilities meet up with Zadie Smith in DEAD AND ALIVE. She sees and embraces strength, artistry and decency, and I welcome her help in understanding our world.
Reviewed by Jane T. Krebs
November 12, 2025
Invitational, challenging, discursive and nuanced
What a very fine writer, thinker and human embracing complexity Zadie Smith is. The foreword to this excellent collection of essays is both clear, truthful and inviting. She welcomes, truly, the reader. Her stated aim is to give us SPACE, acknowledging the fact that the writer is (should be) in some kind of dialogue with the reader. This is obvious, but not every writer is. Sometimes, the feeling is that the reader is being bashed over the head with a viewpoint. The sense with Smith is that she explores, and delves into the messy territory of this-and-that, both-and, rather than either-or. Exploring her own position, acknowledging the story, the what is clearly visible, and the hidden story, the shadow.
Sometimes the exploration of the shadow leads us into places of deep discomfort. As someone who is the daughter of a Jamaican mother and a white British father I guess the experience of being within 2 heritages, 2 very different experiences of history means that more than a single story gets embodied.
British born , London raised, now living in the States, this looking at different cultures from both within and without viewpoint continues.
I particularly appreciated the essays about visual artists, especially the essay on Kara Walker, a black American artist whose work is deeply challenging, visceral and uncomfortable. Walker has been challenged by other artists, because she explores the uncomfortable places. Smith champions that fact. And her essay on Celia Paul, ‘muse’ and model for Lucien Freud, but, most importantly, an artist in her own right
The essays are many and various, from a sharp and clear comparison between climate deniers and those who, earlier, and even now, want to continue to brush the history of slavery on which empire was built, under the carpet – in a speech given on an XR rally in 2023, to an analysis of the film Tar, a film of course deeply controversial and containing many uncomfortable conundrums.
It is the clear HEART in Smith’s writings, allied with the clear mind, - by which I mean such clarity that complexity and opposition is precisely what is engaged with, that makes this collection of essays so rewarding. The un-nuanced viewpoint is exactly what social network chatter, algorithms and populism engage with : easy manipulation as we tend not to want to stay long in the place of uncertainty and complexity
Thank you to the publishers, via Netgalley, who allowed me access to the digital ARC
What a very fine writer, thinker and human embracing complexity Zadie Smith is. The foreword to this excellent collection of essays is both clear, truthful and inviting. She welcomes, truly, the reader. Her stated aim is to give us SPACE, acknowledging the fact that the writer is (should be) in some kind of dialogue with the reader. This is obvious, but not every writer is. Sometimes, the feeling is that the reader is being bashed over the head with a viewpoint. The sense with Smith is that she explores, and delves into the messy territory of this-and-that, both-and, rather than either-or. Exploring her own position, acknowledging the story, the what is clearly visible, and the hidden story, the shadow.
Sometimes the exploration of the shadow leads us into places of deep discomfort. As someone who is the daughter of a Jamaican mother and a white British father I guess the experience of being within 2 heritages, 2 very different experiences of history means that more than a single story gets embodied.
British born , London raised, now living in the States, this looking at different cultures from both within and without viewpoint continues.
I particularly appreciated the essays about visual artists, especially the essay on Kara Walker, a black American artist whose work is deeply challenging, visceral and uncomfortable. Walker has been challenged by other artists, because she explores the uncomfortable places. Smith champions that fact. And her essay on Celia Paul, ‘muse’ and model for Lucien Freud, but, most importantly, an artist in her own right
The essays are many and various, from a sharp and clear comparison between climate deniers and those who, earlier, and even now, want to continue to brush the history of slavery on which empire was built, under the carpet – in a speech given on an XR rally in 2023, to an analysis of the film Tar, a film of course deeply controversial and containing many uncomfortable conundrums.
It is the clear HEART in Smith’s writings, allied with the clear mind, - by which I mean such clarity that complexity and opposition is precisely what is engaged with, that makes this collection of essays so rewarding. The un-nuanced viewpoint is exactly what social network chatter, algorithms and populism engage with : easy manipulation as we tend not to want to stay long in the place of uncertainty and complexity
Thank you to the publishers, via Netgalley, who allowed me access to the digital ARC
August 10, 2025
One of the things I like most about Zadie Smith's essays is that she writes them as she does her novels. "When I am writing I am trying to convey the rhythms, operations and movements of my mind in the face of allthatthereis." Each essay takes as its subject the exploration of a subject, and in this way rather than telling you what to think, she allows you the space to think alongside her.
Her prose is conversational, stream of consciousness, sharpened by her characteristic literary clarity. Each standalone piece is thought-provoking in the best way, because persuasion is not the point: it's simply the opportunity to take in another’s unique point of view.
In her speech on receiving the PEN Literary Service Award, Smith ponders her contribution to the literary world. She settles on this: "I want to give readers a human language fit for their use, and to recognise, in my own use of language, the sacred nature of each and every human being."
This is her gift to writers (and readers) everywhere: to make you feel as if you too can write with confidence, not because you must write the truth, but because you write your truth.
*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*
Her prose is conversational, stream of consciousness, sharpened by her characteristic literary clarity. Each standalone piece is thought-provoking in the best way, because persuasion is not the point: it's simply the opportunity to take in another’s unique point of view.
In her speech on receiving the PEN Literary Service Award, Smith ponders her contribution to the literary world. She settles on this: "I want to give readers a human language fit for their use, and to recognise, in my own use of language, the sacred nature of each and every human being."
This is her gift to writers (and readers) everywhere: to make you feel as if you too can write with confidence, not because you must write the truth, but because you write your truth.
*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*
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