Swing Time

Product Description

How do we become who we are? Can we ever truly escape our origins? Must we dance to the music of our time? Set in London, New York and West Africa, Swing Time is about two brown girls from Willesden who dream of being dancers. Only one - Tracey - has the talent. But the other has ideas which take her further than she could ever have imagined. It is a story of finding happiness in the meanest of places and feeling sad when all around you are happy. It's about the choices we make and the choices made for us. Above all, it's a tale of the friendships that anchor us, define us, and change us forever.How do we become who we are? Can we ever truly escape our origins? Must we dance to the music of our time? Set in London, New York and West Africa, Swing Time is about two brown girls from Willesden who dream of being dancers. Only one - Tracey - has the talent. But the other has ideas which take her further than she could ever have imagined. It is a story of finding happiness in the meanest of places and feeling sad when all around you are happy. It's about the choices we make and the choices made for us. Above all, it's a tale of the friendships that anchor us, define us, and change us forever.
Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975. She is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty and NW, as well as The Embassy of Cambodia and a collection of essays, Changing My Mind. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, and was listed as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. White Teeth won multiple literary awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beautywas shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith is currently a tenured professor of fiction at New York University and lives in London and New York with her husband and two children. Her next novel, Swing Time, is forthcoming in autumn 2016.