Zadie Smith
The joyless rants of Andrea Long Chu
The critic’s modishly provocative takedowns of successful contemporary writers, signed off with vapid aphorisms, make for dispiriting rather than stimulating reading
The sacred and profane
The great American writer is ill-served by this new biography – but luckily we still have her own writing to tell us who she truly was
Marks out of ten
Like a weary schoolmaster toiling over his pupils’ homework, Peter Kemp dispenses praise, encouragement or reproof to modern fiction’s big-hitters
The best British short stories — from Daniel Defoe to Zadie Smith
In this handsome two-volume anthology, Philip Hensher convincingly establishes himself as a world authority on the short story, says Ian Sansom
The symbolism of slashed jeans
In a 2008 essay Zadie Smith held up Tom McCarthy’s austere debut Remainder as a bold exemplar of avant-garde fiction,…
