num_pages: 445
description: On Beauty by Zadie Smith, author of the prize-winning White Teeth, is a funny, powerful and moving story about love and family. 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 Kipps - 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 Kipps, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.
language: English
title: On Beauty
titlecomplete: On Beauty
characters: Victoria Kipps, Howard Belsey, Kiki Belsey, Jerome Belsey
genres: Literary Fiction, Novels, Adult Fiction, Literature, Race, Adult, British Literature, Family, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 80282
places: New England, London, England
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Somerset Maugham Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize
category: Comic Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book in South Asia and Europe
publisher: Hamish Hamilton