On Beauty

Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction and from the celebrated author of White Teethcomes another bestselling masterwork Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Timesto the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beautyis the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith’s reputation as a major literary talent. Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Time, and Publishers WeeklyA New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Denver Post, and Publishers Weeklybestseller A Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic Monthly, Newsday, Christian Science Monitor, and Minneapolis Star TribuneBest Book of the Year Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize BACKCOVER: Praise for On Beauty: A thoroughly original tale . . . wonderfully engaging, wonderfully observed . . . That rare thing: a novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times A thing of beauty. Oh happy day when a writer as gifted as Zadie Smith fulfills her early promise with a novel as accomplished, substantive and penetrating as On Beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Smith’s specialty is her ability to render the new world, in its vibrant multiculturalism, with a kind of dancing, daring joy. . . . Her plots and people sing with life. . . . One of the best of the year, a splendid treat. ” —Chicago Tribune Short-listed for [the 2005] Man Booker Prize, On Beauty is a rollicking satire . . . a tremendously good read.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Zadie Smith is the author of White Teeth and The Autograph Man.