White Teeth pdf – In this post you will get the following:
- White Teeth Summary
- White Teeth pdf and Paperback – Buy Online
- White Teeth Book Author – Zadie Smith
- White Teeth Book Information
- White Teeth Book Characters
- White Teeth Book Book Reviews
- White Teeth PDF Download
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White Teeth Summary
White Teeth pdf, a novel by the British author Zadie Smith published in the year 2000. It focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones—and their families in London. The novel is centered on Britain’s relationship with immigrants from the British Commonwealth.
Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and all together wonderfully her own.
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. 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”). 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.
READ: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and more
White Teeth pdf and Paperback – Buy Online
you can buy the white Teeth PDF and Paperback online with the links below:
- https://www.amazon.com
- https://www.barnesandnoble.com
- https://www.penguin.co.uk
- https://www.abebooks.com
- https://bookshop.org
White Teeth Book Author – Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time, as well as three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations, and a collection of short stories, Grand Union.
White Teeth won multiple awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty was 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 a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.
White Teeth Book Information
- Publisher : Vintage (June 12, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 464 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0375703861
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375703867
- Lexile measure : 960L
- Item Weight : 11.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.19 x 0.97 x 7.93 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #24,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #492 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #933 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #2,621 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
- 4.3 out of 5 stars
- 2,354 ratings
White Teeth Book Characters
Alfred Archibald Jones
Archie is mediocre and indecisive, preferring to make his most important decisions with the flip of a coin. Archie’s ex-wife is Ophelia Diagilo, whom he supposedly drove insane with his mediocrity. He later married Clara, a Jamaican woman less than half his age, with whom he has a daughter, Irie. Archie’s best friend is Samad Iqbal. The two men served together in World War II in the British Army and frequently visited O’Connell’s pub.
Samad Miah Iqbal
Archie’s best friend, a middle-aged World War II veteran with a crippled right hand. Samad was born in Bangladesh and met Archie when they were soldiers in Eastern Europe. He works as a waiter at an Indian restaurant, where he receives few tips. His wife is Alsana Begum, and his twin sons are Magid and Millat. More than anything, Samad wants his sons to grow into religious, traditional Bengali Muslim men. To ensure this, he goes to great lengths, even sending Magid to be raised in Bangladesh (for all intents and purposes, this was a kidnapping).
Clara Bowden
Clara Jones, née Bowden, was an awkward, unpopular Jehovah’s Witness who spent her adolescence canvassing door-to-door. When she meets the equally unappealing Ryan Topps, she abandons her religion and takes up his rebellious ways, though Ryan becomes a staunch Jehovah’s Witness himself. When Ryan and Clara crash into a tree on Ryan’s scooter, Clara’s top teeth are knocked out. She meets Archie Jones and marries him, even though she finds him unimpressive and he is more than twice her age. Archie and Clara have a daughter named Irie.
Alsana Begum
Alsana Iqbal, née Begum, is the young wife of Samad Iqbal, to whom she was promised before her birth. They have twin sons, Magid and Millat. To help pay bills, she sews clothing on her home sewing machine for an S&M shop called Domination in Soho. Although charismatic and judgemental by nature, she thinks marriage is best handled with silence. However, she has a volcanic temper and generally wins fights with Samad by injuring him.
Irie Ambrosia Jones
Irie—whose name means “OK, cool, peaceful” in Patois—is the daughter of Clara and Archie Jones. Irie has been friends with Magid and Millat Iqbal since birth. After struggling with her sexuality and racial identity, Irie finds answers in her grandmother, Hortense Bowden. She resolves to go into the field of dentistry and, despite her best efforts to prevent it, ends up with Joshua Chalfen. Having slept with both Magid and Millat, Irie gives birth to a daughter whose father can never be known, as the twins have exactly the same DNA.
Millat Zulfikar Iqbal
Millat, born two minutes later than his twin brother Magid, is the younger son of Samad and Alsana. After Magid is sent to Bangladesh, Millat comes into his own as a trouble-making, pot-smoking, womanizing rebel. However, Millat eventually rejects this lifestyle in favour of fundamentalist Islam, becoming a major driving force of KEVIN. At the FutureMouse conference, he tries to shoot Dr Perret, but instead shoots Archie in the thigh. Millat may or may not be the father of Irie’s baby.
Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal
Magid is the elder son of Samad and Alsana, and twin brother of Millat. Magid is intellectually precocious and insists on dressing and acting like an adult, even at a very young age. Samad essentially kidnaps Magid and sends him to be raised traditionally in Bangladesh. When he finally returns to London, he joins Marcus Chalfen’s FutureMouse programme. Magid is fascinated by the certainty of fate genetic engineering offers, and by having the power to choose another creature’s path, as his was chosen for him. Magid may or may not be the father of Irie’s baby.
Marcus Chalfen
Marcus Chalfen is a Jewish genetic engineer and husband of Joyce Chalfen. His controversial FutureMouse experiment involves genetically altering a mouse so that it develops cancers at specific times and sites. Marcus loses interest in mentoring Irie when he begins corresponding with Magid, and condescendingly advises that Irie is only intelligent enough to be a dentist.
Joyce Chalfen
Joyce is a horticulturalist, writer, and the wife of Marcus Chalfen. She has four sons, all of whom adore her fiercely. Joyce is a natural nurturer and constantly feels the need to care for things and people. From the moment they meet, Millat entrances Joyce, and she feels the need to mother him and pander to his needs, which Millat exploits.
Joshua Chalfen
Joshua is the son of Joyce and Chalfen, Marcus. Originally interested in his studies at Glenard Oak School, Joshua rebels against the Chalfens (particularly his father) by joining the animal-rights group FATE. Joshua has a long-standing crush on Irie and, later, on Joely, who along with husband Crispin head the group. He stays in FATE largely as an excuse to remain close to her.
White Teeth Book Book Reviews
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2019
This is one of those novels that it’s hard to rate. It’s my first book by this author and coincidentally her debut novel from many years ago and some argue her best novel. And I understand why people will say this is a great work of literature. I think it’s pretty great too. The author’s wit, intelligence, humor, understanding of human nature and ability use all of those skills and talents to express the themes of the immigrant experience, identity, belonging, and the nebulous grey interconnectedness of our histories and experiences in an entertaining way is amazing.
That said, I personally found this a little overwritten for a novel. It is a novel but written in the editorial style of an essay. And while that style is initially humorous and engaging- as though you’re having a one-sided conversation with the author about the plot, after a while, it becomes a little tiresome and too precious and a little too much of a good thing. Like we don’t need as many explanations of cultural references, we don’t need as much analyses of the minutiae of the character’s behaviors, like sometimes, we, the reader, could have been left to do a little inference by ourselves, left to form our own opinions and ideas about the plot and characters without being talked a little to death around every single issue. So whilst the editorializing and essaying were impeccably done and filled with wit and humor, for a novel, it becomes a little tedious and makes the book drag more than necessary. This is my primary issue with this book.
My secondary issue is that I didn’t really begin to enjoy or relate with the book till the 2nd half of it when we began to get the story from Irie’s perspective. Throughout the first half of the book, anytime we get the perspective of the female characters who are entrenched in reality, the book really shines. Unfortunately, much of the first half of the book is mired in the particularly unengaging main characters of Samad and Archie and their insignificant, quixotic adventures. As for the ending, for a book that was written with so much analysis and writing, it felt a bit rushed and sudden and abrupt and not as thoroughly plumbed and combed over as the rest of the book.
I did like this book and I think its discussions of ethnic identity and nationalism and belonging and assimilation and family and generational disconnects are really important and thought-provoking. It’s an incredibly witty book, I just personally found it a little in need of being pared back.
More relevant in 2017: Smith’s White Teeth tears at raw flesh
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2017
Unlike anyone else writing then or since
There’s even a delicious endorsem*nt from Salman Rushdie in the dust jacket
Admittedly a late comer to what is now widely established to be one of the most important books of the last 20 years, I am not going out on much of a limb by saying that White Teeth, the debut novel by a then-25 year old Zadie Smith, is an arresting, original, authentic book.
If you want a plot summary, don’t read this review—google the wiki page—I don’t give good plot descriptions. The reason to read this superb book about growing up an immigrant in England is not the (admittedly interesting) plot, but rather Smith’s superb ability to articulate the commonplace in a transcendent manner, including but not limited to:
• How she describes displacement
• How she deals with history and the white man’s role in it
• How she deals with religion(s)
• How she understands England’s existential angst about a lost empire
• How she presciently (the novel was published in 2000) identifies the coming eruption of Islamic emigres in the west, which caught everyone’s attention (although it certainly didn’t begin) when planes crashed into buildings in New York and Washington DC a year after her book came out and which continues to dominate, arguably to an increasingly greater degree, the media, national politics and international relations from London to Bagdad to Beijing to Delhi, from Washington to Damascus to Moscow to Tehran
The book lurches from European theatre of WWII to an early 19th century earthquake in Jamaica to Islamic extremists protesting science in modern London in search of…a message. That message is probably related to the age-old question of free will versus fate, which we see play out (not for the first time in literature but certainly with a fresh and interesting cast of characters) across several generations of immigrants to England. Smith’s greatest gift is creating engaging, layered characters whose lives you are interested in…but sometimes this is taken too far, like during the improbable convergence of the different families around the issue of Marcus Chalfen’s Future Mouse when Smith needlessly gives heated background on a newly introduced couple Joely and Crispin which prevents the plot’s progression to a less trammeled resolution (which, when it comes, Smith has crafted expertly and with terrific surprise…there’s an easter egg hidden at the end of this book).
There are times where it becomes obvious that this is a first novel and where some editing could have made it much tighter. The authors amazing powers of character development are lost on the Chalfen family, which is wholly unbelievable and reads in many places like a blackboard sketch the author made with the overtly didactic points she wanted to articulate). Smith occasionally spends too much time explaining in detail what characters think and why they think it, rather than letting this precipitate organically from their actions and words.
This is a powerful book and an insightful author—there are strokes of real brilliance. A theme that stuck with me was one of love, summed up by a pair of quotes in the latter part of the book:
“Oh he loves her; just as the English loved India and Africa and Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly.” (p299)
“Greeting cards tell us everyone deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.” (p382)
Smith is no shrinking violet and White Teeth tears at raw flesh—even more so in 2017.
One of the worst books I’ve ever Read
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2019
This book was terrible. I can’t believe this book has as many good reviews as it does. The plot seemed to go no where, it was extremely difficult to follow in some sections, the writing style is just bad, and quite frankly the book was boring. There was maybe 1 interesting character in the whole book. It was long and it dragged. Do yourself a favor, skip this one.
Like Peeling an Incredible Onion
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2018
[tears included]
This is far from a quick read, and even further from a light one. The accents are something to reckon with, and Smith’s willingness to jump from character to character does, at times, impede the natural flow of reading. This is not a book you fall into, simply put.
Yet the work is worth it, as the ending insists on intersectionality of its various plots–including a reveal that is one of the most satisfying I’ve come across (and unexpected). And within it all, the themes are sublime even while subtle, and Smith evinces the prowess that has long since earned her deserved recognition.
It took me far too long to encounter this novel, but I’m nonetheless grateful I did.
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2018
I read Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and loved it. I just gave up trying to read her debut novel White Teeth, which I started because it is on the list of 100 books nominated for the Great American Read. White Teeth has no plot. The two main characters Samad and Arrchie remain essentially the same throughout the many pages I’ve read so far and they weren’t that interesting to begin with. While there are sensational, comic riffs, there aren’t enough to hold my attention.
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