The Wife of Willesden

Informationen zum Autor Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth , The Autograph Man , On Beauty , NW , and Swing Time , as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia , three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free , and Intimations , and a short story collection, Grand Union. 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 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 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 . Klappentext "In her stage-writing debut, celebrated novelist and essayist Zadie Smith brings to life a comedic and cutting twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Wife of Bath. The Wife of Willesden follows Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman in her mid-50s, as she tells her life story to a band of strangers in a small pub on the Kilburn High Road. Wearing fake gold chains, dressed in knock-off designer clothes, and speaking in a mixture of London slang and patois, Alvita recalls her five marriages in outrageous, bawdy detail, rewrites her mistakes as triumphs, and shares her beliefs on femininity, sexuality, and misogyny with anyone willing to listen. A thoughtful reimagining of an unforgettable narrative of female sexual power, written with singular verve and wit, The Wife of Willesden shows why Zadie Smith is one of the sharpest and most versatile writers working today"-- Leseprobe We are inside the Colin Campbell, a small pub on the Kilburn High Road. The sun is setting on the celebrations of the announcement: Brent is to be the Borough of Culture for 2020. People are pouring into the pub for refreshment and rest. A large banner above the bar reads: 'The Kilburn High Road Pub Crawl'. Another sign reads: 'BRENT BOROUGH OF CULTURE: 2020'. The Campbell is a quiet pub, usually occupied by a few all-day lone drinkers, but today these old men in their wrinkled suits are suddenly inundated by a colourful crowd. There's been dancing; some people are in carnival-like costume; there are people in their national dress, families, teenagers, lovers. Every possible kind of person. The bar staff struggle to serve the influx of people and seat them all, but after a bit of a kerfuffle, most have a table, and now begin opening packets of crisps, or their own tubs of home-made food ... There is, in one corner, a little makeshift stage, with a home-made sign hanging behind: 'Celebrating Local Stories'. A red-headed young man with his back to the audience has a video camera on a stand, ready to film whoever comes up to talk - but people seem reluctant. Music is playing, footie is on the TV, we can't hear the people, but we see lots of little local dramas and conversations playing out, and may notice one especially striking woman, ALVITA, WIFE OF WILLESDEN. She's settling seating arguments, she's handing over pints to people who can't reach the bar, laughing and joking with everyone ... In one corner, the AUTHOR sits, quieter than the rest, with a laptop on her table. AUTHOR It was the summer of 2019. I was back home, checking the local scene And the whole neighbourhood was in the streets To celebrate the recent local feat: Winning the London Borough of Culture. Call it a pilgrimage: all together We crawled down Kilburn High Road, until we

Product details

• Authors: Zadie Smith
• Publisher: Penguin Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.02.2023
• EAN: 9780593653739
• ISBN: 978-0-593-65373-9
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 202 mm x 13 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Poetry, drama