Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Smith, Zadie

ISBN 10: 0143145215 ISBN 13: 9780143145219

Publisher: Penguin Audio, 2009

Synopsis

Unabridged · 9 CDs, 11 hours

A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith’s nonfiction over the past decade.

About this title

Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2009: One of Zadie Smith's great gifts as a novelist is her openness: both to character and ideas in her stories, and to what a novel itself should be. That she's a novelist was clear as soon she broke through with White Teeth in her early twenties, but what kind she'll be (or will be next) seems open to change. Which all, along with her consistent intelligence, grace, and wit, makes her an ideal essayist too, especially for the sort of "occasional essays" collected for the first time in Changing My Mind. She can make the case equally for the cozy "middle way" of E.M. Forster and the most purposefully demanding of David Foster Wallace's stories, both as a reader and, you imagine, as a writer who is considering their methods for her own. The occasions in this book didn't only bring her to write about writers, though: she also investigates, among other subjects, Katherine Hepburn, Liberia, and Barack Obama (through the lens of Pygmalion), and, in the collection's finest piece, recalls her late father and their shared comedy snobbery. One wishes more occasions upon her. --Tom Nissley

About the Author:

Zadie Smith was born in Northwest London in 1975 and still lives in the area. She is the author of White Teeth and The Autograph Man.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143145215
• ISBN 13: 9780143145219
• Binding: Audio CD