num_pages: 448
description: On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel.Epic and intimate, hilarious and poignant, White Teeth is the story of two North London families--one headed by Archie, the other by Archie's best friend, a Muslim Bengali named Samad Iqbal. Pals since they served together in World War II, Archie and Samad are a decidedly unlikely pair. Plodding Archie is typical in every way until he marries Clara, a beautiful, toothless Jamaican woman half his age, and the couple have a daughter named Irie (the Jamaican word for "no problem"). Samad--devoutly Muslim, hopelessly "foreign"--weds the feisty and always suspicious Alsana in a prearranged union. They have twin sons named Millat and Magid, one a pot-smoking punk-cum-militant Muslim and the other an insufferable science nerd. The riotous and tortured histories of the Joneses and the Iqbals are fundamentally intertwined, capturing an empire's worth of cultural identity, history, and hope.Zadie Smith's dazzling first novel plays out its bounding, vibrant course in a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute. A winning debut in every respect, White Teeth marks the arrival of a wondrously talented writer who takes on the big themes--faith, race, gender, history, and culture--and triumphs.
language: English
title: White Teeth
titlecomplete: White Teeth
characters: Joshua Chalfen, Hortense Bowden, Alfred Archibald Jones, Clara Bowden, Mr Topps, Marcus Chalfen, Samad Miah Iqbal, Magid Iqbal, Alsana Begum, Millat Zulfikar Iqbal, Irie Ambrosia Jones, Joyce Chalfen
genres: Fiction, Classics, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature, Race, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 152121
places: London, England, England
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Shortlist, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Whitbread Award
category: First Novel, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Puddly Award
category: Debut Novel, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best First Book Overall, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Sunday Times/Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Betty Trask Award
publisher: Random House