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Dood en levend
Er zijn maar weinig schrijvers die de kunst en het ambacht van het literaire essay zo goed verstaan als Zadie Smith. Ze relateert haar persoonlijke ervaringen en ideeën aan de grote vraagstukken van deze tijd en weet daarbij steeds haar solidariteit en empathie te behouden.
In haar nieuwe essaybundel verdiept Smith zich in onderwerpen die haar de afgelopen jaren hebben beziggehouden. Ze voert bijna intieme dialogen met haar inspiratiebronnen; ze beschrijft het werk van kunstenaars en filmmakers, schrijvers en denkers. Wij mogen met haar meeleven aan haar bureau, waar ze de beruchte rechtszaak onderzoekt die de basis vormt van haar laatste bestseller Charlatan. En ze vraagt ons met haar mee te rouwen om het heengaan van literaire grootheden als Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth en Toni Morrison.
In haar nieuwe essaybundel verdiept Smith zich in onderwerpen die haar de afgelopen jaren hebben beziggehouden. Ze voert bijna intieme dialogen met haar inspiratiebronnen; ze beschrijft het werk van kunstenaars en filmmakers, schrijvers en denkers. Wij mogen met haar meeleven aan haar bureau, waar ze de beruchte rechtszaak onderzoekt die de basis vormt van haar laatste bestseller Charlatan. En ze vraagt ons met haar mee te rouwen om het heengaan van literaire grootheden als Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth en Toni Morrison.
354 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 28, 2025
647 people are currently reading
7282 people want to read
About the author
Zadie Smith
114 books16.2k 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 184 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.
Read
February 5, 2026Zadie in essay form is perfection. Much is made of her fiction, nowhere near enough is made of her non-fiction. See her at the @wheelercentre next month. I love essays so damn much.
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.
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.
February 17, 2026
Haar scherpte, nuances, perspectivisme, redelijkheid, balans, positie beyond links-rechts is exact wat ik mis op social media en in heel veel journalisten (behalve dan Ezra Klein edm). Een verademing en dorstlesser tegelijk.
Over cultural appropriation, woke, Gaza, schrijverschap, social media, de huidige VS en UK, popcultuur, schrijvers als Philip Roth, Toni Morisson, James Baldwin, Martin Amis,
Knausgaard, Hillary Mantell, Joan Didion, Julian Barnes.
Dit belandt sowieso in de top van mijn best of 2026 non-fictie lijst.
Absolute aanrader!
Over cultural appropriation, woke, Gaza, schrijverschap, social media, de huidige VS en UK, popcultuur, schrijvers als Philip Roth, Toni Morisson, James Baldwin, Martin Amis,
Knausgaard, Hillary Mantell, Joan Didion, Julian Barnes.
Dit belandt sowieso in de top van mijn best of 2026 non-fictie lijst.
Absolute aanrader!
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
February 14, 2026
These essays are like being handed a developing Polaroid? as smith spells out some feeling or thought I once half had I see that idea come into focus and I think yes!! Like that! And a great relief comes over me.
And then of course the photo is only half-done developing and smith then makes it brighter and clearer and funnier and more complicated and more humane?
Thank god I get to be exactly this age reading exactly this book. I feel like a freshmen lurking near the locker of a cooler smarter wiser girl at school I’m trying to learn from.
And then of course the photo is only half-done developing and smith then makes it brighter and clearer and funnier and more complicated and more humane?
Thank god I get to be exactly this age reading exactly this book. I feel like a freshmen lurking near the locker of a cooler smarter wiser girl at school I’m trying to learn from.
Read
January 18, 2026As always, she's infinitely readable. Offers more ruminations on time passing and death as a collection of essays than Feel Free did. Some very lovely eulogies to other writers. She says something like 'writing essays is easy because it's just opinion', but I think making your opinion read as engaging as hers is no small feat.
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 2, 2025
Smith is a delight when she talks about writing or the arts, and full of cliches when her subject is politics.
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.
January 27, 2026
very much enjoyed this one. I haven't read any of Zadie Smith's essays, was pleasantly surprised by how accessible, funny and generous they were. Not unlike her interviews. Lots of thoughts on how algorithms mediate time, how there is radical/positive potential in refusing algorithms from entering every single part of our lives. Her more anecdotal/personal writing is always so funny and warm, particularly the chapter on her teenage years.
February 25, 2026
absolutely in awe of how zadie smith manages to balance being incredibly honest, deeply empathetic, and intellectually brilliant! my personal favourite essay is ‘Fascinated to Presume: In Defence of Fiction’ but every single one is worth the read.
officially her disciple 🙏
officially her disciple 🙏
January 31, 2026
There’s no one better.
February 10, 2026
Needed some non fiction bad and this did not disappoint. “Some Notes on Mediated Time” and “Conscience and Consciousness: A Craft Talk for the People and the Person” my faves of the bunch.
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.
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 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.
February 3, 2026
This book was not for me. I was actually really disappointed in it. I think this is partly because I’m not her target audience— perhaps a generational divide. Maybe I should have suspected Smith’s writing is no longer for me since I really did not like The Fraud. However, I’m always drawn back in because she is such a good interviewee. Despite hating The Fraud, I clung to her every word on the paperback tour for the book. I love her podcast interviews. I’m going to the book tour for this on Thursday and it’s possible her speaking aloud will change my mind. Which makes me wonder how different the things she says out loud are from what she writes, because usually I find the two to be pretty comparable for most writers.
I think I found a lot of the ideas in this book to be unoriginal or underdeveloped, not having the courage to go deep enough. I also found it weird how Smith is so passionate about climate activism but seems solely preoccupied with plastic water bottles as the culprit of climate change. She also challenges the maxim “write what you know” but I wasn’t very convinced. Of course I believe that people can and should write about whatever they want to write about. I think we are thinking too narrowly when we problematize “write what you know.” Yes, I am allowed to write about someone with a different identity from me, but I should do this with some semblance of research or observation.
My breaking point was the essay on student encampments. What was completely clear was that Smith had not visited an encampment. These encampments were non-violent places of community, solidarity, and justice. They were also welcoming of EVERYONE. The one at GWU had holocaust survivors who sat in the center of the encampment every day with their signs. Jewish people were welcomed into the space, never once attacked. And no one ever engaged with the counter-protesters. The ONLY violence committed was against the protesters by the police. She also critiques the language used in pro-Palestine activism. In particularly, she takes issue with Zionism. She writes that people use it “as if that word were an unchanged and unchangeable monolith, meaning exactly the same thing in 2024 and 1948 as if meant in 1890 or 1901.” Well obviously. The meaning of words changes over time. People who use it now also DO know its history and in the modern era it’s a colonial one. All of those dates mentioned encompass that. She says that we need to surrender all other concerns in the face of a demand for ceasefire. I can’t even get into how stupid that take is. You want us to address history and nuance but not talk about settler colonialism, GENOCIDE, etc etc. Makes my blood boil.
The best moments in the book are when Smith tells personal stories, particularly in the obituary section where she divulges her interactions with famous writers who were her close friends. I thought her takes on social media and the internet was interesting but wanted her to be a bit more radical with her solutions for taking back our attention and time from The Phone.
Also, turns out she home schools her children? So many questions there.
I think I found a lot of the ideas in this book to be unoriginal or underdeveloped, not having the courage to go deep enough. I also found it weird how Smith is so passionate about climate activism but seems solely preoccupied with plastic water bottles as the culprit of climate change. She also challenges the maxim “write what you know” but I wasn’t very convinced. Of course I believe that people can and should write about whatever they want to write about. I think we are thinking too narrowly when we problematize “write what you know.” Yes, I am allowed to write about someone with a different identity from me, but I should do this with some semblance of research or observation.
My breaking point was the essay on student encampments. What was completely clear was that Smith had not visited an encampment. These encampments were non-violent places of community, solidarity, and justice. They were also welcoming of EVERYONE. The one at GWU had holocaust survivors who sat in the center of the encampment every day with their signs. Jewish people were welcomed into the space, never once attacked. And no one ever engaged with the counter-protesters. The ONLY violence committed was against the protesters by the police. She also critiques the language used in pro-Palestine activism. In particularly, she takes issue with Zionism. She writes that people use it “as if that word were an unchanged and unchangeable monolith, meaning exactly the same thing in 2024 and 1948 as if meant in 1890 or 1901.” Well obviously. The meaning of words changes over time. People who use it now also DO know its history and in the modern era it’s a colonial one. All of those dates mentioned encompass that. She says that we need to surrender all other concerns in the face of a demand for ceasefire. I can’t even get into how stupid that take is. You want us to address history and nuance but not talk about settler colonialism, GENOCIDE, etc etc. Makes my blood boil.
The best moments in the book are when Smith tells personal stories, particularly in the obituary section where she divulges her interactions with famous writers who were her close friends. I thought her takes on social media and the internet was interesting but wanted her to be a bit more radical with her solutions for taking back our attention and time from The Phone.
Also, turns out she home schools her children? So many questions there.
January 6, 2026
Zadie Smith, my new humanist existentialist friend. I appreciated her many deeply thoughtful, grounded insights into identity, community, writing, art, and social and political dialogue. In many places she has a different perspective from me, but to her that seems to be the whole magic of writing: communicating the world as she sees it, as an invitation to the reader to consider where their own attention and experiences have led them. In her own words, “Some books tell you what to think; other books allow you space to think alongside them, and have thoughts of your own.” I’m looking forward to reading her novels.
February 4, 2026
every time i read or listen to anything by zadie smith i remember how i missed a once in a life time opportunity to hear her speak my sophomore year at cornell because i had an exam during that time and it breaks my heart, atlas that is the price you pay for choosing to be an engineer.
It’s funny because I usually hate the opinions of others, but this lady is just a wonder!
anyways: some of my fave lines, many more missing
we are the main characters in the novels of our lives but it is others who read us
you do not need to be perfectly aligned with somebody to be also in their debt (example, parents)
cherish the world at the same time you struggle to enjoy it
It’s funny because I usually hate the opinions of others, but this lady is just a wonder!
anyways: some of my fave lines, many more missing
we are the main characters in the novels of our lives but it is others who read us
you do not need to be perfectly aligned with somebody to be also in their debt (example, parents)
cherish the world at the same time you struggle to enjoy it
February 12, 2026
The essays in this collection built slowly for me, but at the end I was just astounded by Smith's intellect and insights. I love her novels but hadn't read any of her non-fiction before, and so much of these pieces felt warm and comforting to me as a fellow Gen-X-er. To borrow from the compliment she gives to many other writers, her sentences just take you away. Now I'll prioritize the unread Zadie Smith novels on my shelf, I think!
February 19, 2026
How have I not read Zadie Smith before? She’s brilliant, thoughtful and engaging. I really enjoyed these essays, some went a little over my head, but so many touched me and resonated with me. I look forward to reading more of her work.
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).
February 1, 2026
Some Essayists - e.g. John Jeremiah Sullivan - dazzle with their observation and ability to see a thing in a way that their reader hasn't. Or sometimes to simply decide to look where their reader won't. Others dazzle instead with their personal analysis and forced introspection that arises out of their chosen topics. In this measure, Zadie Smith is my favorite. With the Sullivans of the world, I eagerly await their new essays. With Ms. Smith (and her like), I find myself instead yearning for a conversation. Her mind seems specially tuned to serve and volley, open to ideas, as ready for debate as it is to accept its biases and mistakes. I love to read her work but would give it all up to have coffee and a conversation with her
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.
January 30, 2026
Really great collection of essays that were fun to dip in and out of. An interesting entry point into Zadie Smith, I’m keen to sink my (white) teeth into some of her fiction.
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