NW
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  • Published: 6 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780241145814
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download

NW

Formats & editions
Paperback
24 Jul 2013
EBook
22 Aug 2012
Audiobook
6 Sep 2012
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Twenty-first-century London comes vividly to life in Zadie Smith's first novel since the bestselling On Beauty

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of NW, Zadie Smith's first novel since the bestselling On Beauty. Read by Don Gilet and Karen Bryson.

This is the story of a city.

The north-west corner of a city. Here you'll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all. And many people in between.

Every city is like this. Cheek-by-jowl living. Separate worlds.

And then there are the visitations: the rare times a stranger crosses a threshold without permission or warning, causing a disruption in the whole system. Like the April afternoon a woman came to Leah Hanwell's door, seeking help, disturbing the peace, forcing Leah out of her isolation . . .

Zadie Smith's brilliant tragi-comic new novel follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.

Depicting the modern urban zone - familiar to town-dwellers everywhere - Zadie Smith's NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.
  • Published: 6 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780241145814
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
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About the author

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975. She is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time, as well as The Embassy of Cambodia and the essay collection, Changing My Mind. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has twice been listed as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists. She has won the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award among many others, and been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Zadie Smith is currently a tenured professor of fiction at New York University and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.

portrait photo of Zadie Smith

Also by Zadie Smith

White Teeth
The Fraud
Changing My Mind
Intimations
On Beauty
Grand Union
The Wife of Willesden
See all

Praise for NW

Witty and fresh with authenticity . . . White Teeth is one of the best first novels of recent years, characterized by a sharp intelligence, a love of words and a broad range of allusion, both to literature and pop culture

Literary Review

Quirky, sassy and wise . . . An instinctive storytelling talent

The New York Times

The outstanding debut of the new millenium

Observer

Praise for White Teeth:

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Intellectually agile . . . Ecstatic inventiveness

Time

Wonderfully funny. A pleasure from the first page to the last

Evening Standard

Praise for The Autograph Man:

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Delightfully entertaining . . . Filled with humour, generosity and contemporary sparkle

Daily Telegraph

Wittily inventive . . . Smith is the most naturally gifted young novelist around - with a fastidious ear for differentiated dialogue and a lethally quiet comic touch. Above all, she can move us

Craig Raine, Times Literary Supplement

Smith is an author of sublime gifts

The Herald

Praise for On Beauty:

-

Discover more

Article
An ultimate guide to Zadie Smith

Learn about Zadie Smith's incredible books. You're sure to find a new favourite on this list!