“Iwanted to know what it’s like to be a Jewish Chinese guy or an old black woman or a white professor or whatever.”
Zadie Smith is explaining that it was her curiosity about others that started her writing. Two decades later, what she describes as her “absolute intention to get under the skin” is the thread running through all her work. Whether describing ridiculous characters or real-life people, Zadie is like a wise friend who prompts us to step out of our bubbles and reach out, to – using the phrase that inspired her 2005 novel On Beauty – “only connect”.
She grew up in north-west London, born to an English father and Jamaican mother. A real bookworm (aged 14, she changed the spelling of her name from ‘S’ to a ‘Z’…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2017 - Issue 58