Philip Tew is Professor of English (Post-1900 Literature) at Brunel University, UK, Director of Brunel's Centre for Contemporary Writing and Director of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies.

Since the publication of White Teeth in 2000, Zadie Smith has become one of the most popular contemporary writers and also one of the mostly widely studied. Taking criticism of Smith's work beyond its traditional focus on postcolonialism and multicultural identity, Reading Zadie Smith brings together leading international scholars to open up new directions in criticism of Smith's work.
Covering such key topics as posthumanism, 'hysterical realism', religion, identity and ethics, this book brings together a full range of current critical perspectives to explore not only Smith's novels but also her short stories, her criticism and her non-fiction writing.

Introduction, Philip Tew
Part I: Individual Novels
Section One: White Teeth (2000)
1. The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Zadie Smith's White Teeth and the Posthuman, Brad Buchanan
2. White Teeth Reconsidered: Narrative Deception and Uncomfortable Truths, Ulrike Tancke
3. Body Larceny: Somatic Seizure and Control in Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Joanna O'Leary
Section Two: The Autograph Man (2002)
4. "I could have been somebody": Identity and Mediation in Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, Tracey K. Parker
5. Celebrity, Suburban Identity & Transatlantic Philographic Traces of Meaning in The Autograph Man, Philip Tew
Section Three: On Beauty (2005)
6. On Beauty and Being Right, Lynn Wells
7. History in Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Susan Alice Fischer
Part II: Other Works, Broader Perspectives
Section Four: Beyond the Novels and the Public Domain
8. An Alternative Zadie Smith: Reading the Short Stories, Lucienne Loh
9. "Hysterical Realism": Reflections on the Smith / Wood Debate, Joe Brooker
10. Negotiating Zadie Smith's Non-Fiction, Karen Zouaoui
Section Five: Fakery and Belief
11. 'A Breed of Lyrical Realism': Form and Fakery in the Novels of Zadie Smith, Christopher Holmes
12. On Religion: Postsecular Quests, Scriptural Borrowings and Irreducible Beauty in the Fiction of Zadie Smith, Magdalena Maczynska
Conclusion
Further Reading
Index.