Swing Time Synopsis
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2017. A dazzlingly exuberant new novel moving from north west London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, black bodies and black music, what it means to belong, what it means to be free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten either.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780141036601 |
| Publication date: |
6th July 2017 |
| Author: |
Zadie Smith |
| Publisher: |
Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
453 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Zadie Smith Press Reviews
'Endlessly satisfying... [Zadie Smith] has never written better. Pitch-perfect, masterful and sophisticated' Telegraph
'Zadie Smith is the best writer of our generation, and Swing Time is her best book to date. As the title promises, the novel swings and pulsates with life, filled with emotion, excited by intellect and haunted by sadness. What a miracle that literature can still do things other forms of art cannot. What a miracle that Zadie Smith is among us, writing.' -- Gary Shteyngart
'Clever, funny, confident and kind. Her gift for language is a pleasure and her character shines through' Evening Standard
'[Smith] packs more intelligence, humour and sheer energy into any given scene than anyone else of her generation' Sunday Telegraph
'Zadie Smith's finest novel. Extraordinary, virtuosic... [It] does what only literature can and what only great literature will: forces us to assess the very vocabulary with which we speak of human experience' Observer
'Zadie Smith at her finest... [An] unflinching portrait of friendship... [A] triumph' Guardian
'Ingenious, inspired... Zadie Smith's new novel is very good indeed' Sunday Times
'Shrewd observation and sly satire, profundity and genuine purpose, as well as some of the most heart-stoppingly lyrical writing of her career' Scotland on Sunday
'A powerful story of lives marred by secrets, unfulfilled potential, the unjustness of the world...and the dances people do to rise above it all' Economist
'A sweeping meditation on race and identity... [Smith's] most ambitious work yet' Esquire
'A nuanced, richly rewarding tale' Mail on Sunday
About Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975, and continues to live both there and in New York, where she teaches on the Creative Writing programme at NYU.
White Teeth was first published in 2000 and won the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the WH Smith Book Award for New Talent, the Frankfurt eBook Award for Best Fiction Work Originally Published in 2000 and both the Commonwealth Writers First Book Award and Overall Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Zadie Smith's other novels are The Autograph Man and On Beauty, which was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2005 and won The Orange Prize for Fiction 2006. She is also author of a collection of essays, Changing my Mind, and the editor of a book of short stories, The Book of Other People.
Her most recent novel is NW.
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