Self-Reflexivity: A Key to the Narrative Style in Zadie Smith’s NW

Abstract

Zadie Smith was born in North London in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother. She was born as Sadie Smith, which she changed into Zadie when she was 14 years old. Smith attended Cambridge University where she studied English literature. During her studies, Smith contributed to the Mays Anthology, which is a collection of short stories written by students of Oxford and Cambridge universities. She also guest edited the 2001 collection of Mays Anthology. In 2003 Smith left for the USA, where she worked at the Harvard University.  Smith has written six novels: White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty (2005), NW (2012), The Embassy of Cambodia (2013) and Swing Time (2016). Smith has also published a number of stories and other writings including an introduction to the Bloomsbury edition of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.