On Beauty Paperback by Zadie Smith

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2006-09-12)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 464 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780143017639
• Item Weight: 421.85 grams
• Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 cm

In this loose retelling of Howard's End, Zadie Smith considers the big questions:

Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful?

Set in New England mainly and London partly, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families—the Belseys and the Kippses—and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kippses, the confusions—both personal and political—of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.

About the Author

ZADIE SMITH is the author of the novels White Teeth; The Autograph Man; On Beauty; NW; and Swing Time; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, and Intimations; and a short story collection, Grand Union. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. White Teeth won multiple literary awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Smith is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.