Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively.At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected.Ĭhanging My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction.

Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences - in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond - that have nourished Smith's rich life of the mind. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others - have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers - E. In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself.

Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays - some published here for the first time - on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani. Split into four sections - 'Reading,' 'Being,' 'Seeing,' and 'Feeling' - Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith's unique vantage. Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary.

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