Multicultural London in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000): A Celebration of Unpredictability and Uncertainty?

Abstract

Zadie Smith’s debut novel White Teeth made her the first British literary celebrity of the twenty-first century. Born in North London in 1975, Smith attended the University of Cambridge and began her literary career with short story publications in the Mays Anthologies. After being contacted by publishers interested as to whether she might write a novel, Smith began work on White Teeth. A literary phenomenon before it was even completed, in 1997 the novel was the subject of a fierce auction between publishers, with Hamish Hamilton finally prevailing (the advance paid to Smith was the subject of a great deal of media interest and was widely reported as being a six-figure sum, although this has never been officially confirmed). An extensive marketing campaign ensued on both sides of the Atlantic before the novel actually appeared in early 2000. When the novel was finally released, it was greeted with generally very positive reviews and sold enormously well. It went on to win the Whitbread First Novel Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Prize, the WHSmith Book Award for New Talent and the Betty Trask Award; it was also long-listed for the Booker Prize and short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction as well as, in the US, the National Critics Circle Awards and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The novel has been published throughout the world in translation, and in 2002 was televised in Britain as a film adaptation.