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White teeth : a novel / Zadie Smith.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York : Vintage International, 2001, ©2000.Edition: 1st Vintage International edDescription: 448 pages ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0375703861
  • 9780375703867
  • 1417626283
  • 9781417626281
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Acknowledgments -- Archie 1974, 1945: The peculiar second marriage of Archie Jones ; Teething trouble ; Two families ; Three coming ; The root canals of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal -- Samad 1984, 1857: The temptation of Samad Iqbal ; Molars ; Mitosis ; Mutiny! ; The root canals of Mangal Pande -- Irie 1990, 1907: The miseducation of Irie Jones ; Canines : the ripping teeth ; The root canals of Hortense Bowden ; More English than the English ; Chalfenism versus Bowdenism -- Magid, Millat, And Marcus 1992, 1999: The return of Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal ; Crisis talks and eleventh-hour tactics ; The end of history versus the last man ; Final space ; Of mice and memory.
Awards:
  • Guardian First Book Award, 2000.
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, 2000.
  • Whitbread Award, 2000.
Summary: On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel. Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire--as they make their way in modern England.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Fiction SMITH, ZADIE Available 33111010894885
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer ( The New York Times ) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time-- set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.

Zadie Smith's dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith's voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own.

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England's irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn't quite match her name (Jamaican for "no problem"). Samad's late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal's every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith.

"[ White Teeth ] is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones, and textures...with a raucous energy and confidence." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Originally published ... by Hamish Hamilton, London, and subsequently ... by Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000"--Title page verso.

Acknowledgments -- Archie 1974, 1945: The peculiar second marriage of Archie Jones ; Teething trouble ; Two families ; Three coming ; The root canals of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal -- Samad 1984, 1857: The temptation of Samad Iqbal ; Molars ; Mitosis ; Mutiny! ; The root canals of Mangal Pande -- Irie 1990, 1907: The miseducation of Irie Jones ; Canines : the ripping teeth ; The root canals of Hortense Bowden ; More English than the English ; Chalfenism versus Bowdenism -- Magid, Millat, And Marcus 1992, 1999: The return of Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal ; Crisis talks and eleventh-hour tactics ; The end of history versus the last man ; Final space ; Of mice and memory.

On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel. Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire--as they make their way in modern England.

Guardian First Book Award, 2000.

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, 2000.

Whitbread Award, 2000.

Accelerated Reader AR UG 6.9 29.0 67005.

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