Zadie Smith, On Beauty

Fiona Tolan (Liverpool John Moores)

Ed. by Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2005

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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On Beauty

(2005) is Zadie Smith’s third novel, following her incredibly successful debut novel,

White Teeth

in 2000, and

The Autograph Man

in 2002. It was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2005 and won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006. Like the earlier two novels, it is a broadly humorous text, largely focused on family relations, and significantly engaged with interracial and cross-generational connections. Set primarily in the prosperous fictional university town of Wellington on the east coast of the United States (somewhat resembling Cambridge, Massachusetts),

On Beauty

follows the fortunes of the Belsey family, comprising Kiki Belsey, a beautiful black American woman, once petite and now obese, working as a hospital administrator, her white British husband Howard Belsey, a…

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1877 words

Citation: Tolan, Fiona. "On Beauty". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 February 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21583, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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