NW

Zadie Smith celebrates the dark, complicated, exhilarating mosaic of London in her eagerly awaited new novel. Set in northwest London, we follow four locals—Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan—as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their youth. In private houses and public parks, at work and at play, these Londoners inhabit a complicated place — as beautiful as it is brutal — where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys; taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Breathtakingly alive to nuances of class and race, replete with an electric cast of characters (including a socially inept forensic psychiatrist and his feckless brother), Smith’s tale of London life is both a riveting social document and a deeply moving unraveling of personal history. Presented in interlocking chapters that move through time and space with astonishing grace, this astoundingly assured novel is unlike anything she has written before.