White teeth by Zadie Smith

The book follows the lives of two best friends Samad Iqbal who is an immigrant from Bangladesh and Archie Jones who is an English man. The two friends who met while serving during the war are both married to much younger women. The book starts with Archie whose frustrated with his Italian wife who left him after a troubled childless marriage and tries to kill himself. He gets interrupted and realizes that he wants to live. He then meets and marries Clara who is a Jamaican woman and together they have a daughter called Irie. 

Samad who marries a young woman called Alsana through a traditionally arranged marriage gets twin boys named Millat and Magid. Samad struggles to keep his Islamic faith in the English country and decided to send one of his sons back to his home country so that he gets an Islamic upbringing. The two boys end up drifting apart and become complete opposite in terms of beliefs. Irie becomes pregnant after sleeping with two men in the same day. She can’t know who the father is seeing as ...well you have to read the book to find out why!

The story is mainly about the lives of immigrants and their children as they try to survive in a foreign land and society. There is the conflict between between trying to adapt in this new society while maintaining and preserving their culture. Samad is especially concerned about his children loosing their identities and fully assimilating in this new society. They all feel lost as they try their best to find where they fit in their new environment. The writer as most reviews observed use the title ‘White teeth’ to show that despite all the different backgrounds, all these people are unified in that they all have white teeth. Irie desires to be a dentist which is also viewed as an attempt to unify everyone.

The writer manages to retain the momentum from beginning to end. Unlike some novels which normally plateau somewhere in between this one kept me interested from beginning to end. What even impressed me more is that the author, Zadie Smith wrote this book when she was only 25 years old back in 2000 and managed to win numerous awards like the Whitebread best first novel award. There are so many things I learned from this book as the writer writes the most profound things. Her use of language is so sophisticated, something I would expect from a veteran writer and not in a debut book. This book literally blew me away. I’ve never read anything like it. (And no she didn’t pay me to advertise)  It doesn’t hurt that she is also beautiful to boot.