(Ebook) On Beauty. by Zadie Smith ISBN 9781594200632, 1594200637

(Ebook) On Beauty. by Zadie Smith ISBN 9781594200632, 1594200637

Male lust and female friendship draw two families together - despite the gulf that exists between them - in Zadie Smith’s engaging satire.

Professor Howard Belsey has done something stupid. And what is more, it is the stupid ‘something’ that men his age seem programmed by cliché to act out. Exiled in his own home by the anger of his wife and the disapproval of his three kids, Howard is about to see his role in the family further undermined by the arrival in their East Coast college town of his nemesis, British academic Monty Kipps.

"Her new novel is masterly on almost any level — impressive in its command of every register of English, never tiresome despite its length and astonishingly sympathetic to every sort of human frailty ... centre stage stands the Belsey family, arguing, slamming doors, increasingly beleaguered, confused and heartbroken ... As the novel progresses, Smith smoothly shifts into and out of the minds of the various Belsey's, as they sigh, quip and agonize against the backdrop of Wellington classes, parties, lectures and faculty meetings ... At times she can be a little extravagant in her imagery...but her overall tone suggests a kindly Voltairean tolerance for human weakness... it's evident that Smith is a writer for the long haul, an artist whose books we will look forward to every few years, a real and deeply satisfying novelist. E.M. Forster would be proud."  -  Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

Winner of the 2006 Women's Prize For Fiction

Zadie Smith is a multi-award-winning author, who made a huge impact with her first novel, White Teeth, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. It was followed by The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time, a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia, and a collection of essays, Changing My Mind. On Beauty won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.