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Next up for the Service95 Book Club…
“In 2000, Zadie Smith detonated the books world with White Teeth and has been part of our literary DNA ever since. She’s been compared to everyone from Dickens to Rushdie, which is staggering praise for a debut author barely out of university.
This glorious and hilarious intergenerational soap opera of multicultural London spans the 20th century, told through the eyes of the Iqbals and the Joneses, two families you will never forget.
It starts with middle-aged big-hearted loser Archie Jones attempting – and failing – to gas himself in his car, stung by a failed first marriage from which all he salvaged was the vacuum cleaner. He meets 19-year-old Clara, a recovering Jehovah’s Witness of Jamaican heritage, at an End of the World party in a North London squat, and life begins again.
Archie’s friend Samad Iqbal, who looks a bit like Omar Sharif from a certain angle, is still waiting for his wife to be born when the two men meet in the last days of the Second World War. When Samad and Alsana finally meet at their wedding three decades later, she is more than a match - physically and mentally - for her much older husband.
The next generation – twins Millat and Magid Iqbal and Irie Jones – ramp up the volume, pushing their parents to the limit as they challenge their ideas of home and identity.
It’s a big, loud, boisterous and fiercely clever book. Reading Zadie play with the multitudes of language on London’s streets, and explore identity, community and the competing pulls of nature and nurture, is an unforgettable experience. No wonder this book became the literary landmark for a generation.”
- Dua x
Make sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter for the full #MonthlyRead experience, and join the conversation on the @service95bookclub podcast – coming soon.
“In 2000, Zadie Smith detonated the books world with White Teeth and has been part of our literary DNA ever since. She’s been compared to everyone from Dickens to Rushdie, which is staggering praise for a debut author barely out of university.
This glorious and hilarious intergenerational soap opera of multicultural London spans the 20th century, told through the eyes of the Iqbals and the Joneses, two families you will never forget.
It starts with middle-aged big-hearted loser Archie Jones attempting – and failing – to gas himself in his car, stung by a failed first marriage from which all he salvaged was the vacuum cleaner. He meets 19-year-old Clara, a recovering Jehovah’s Witness of Jamaican heritage, at an End of the World party in a North London squat, and life begins again.
Archie’s friend Samad Iqbal, who looks a bit like Omar Sharif from a certain angle, is still waiting for his wife to be born when the two men meet in the last days of the Second World War. When Samad and Alsana finally meet at their wedding three decades later, she is more than a match - physically and mentally - for her much older husband.
The next generation – twins Millat and Magid Iqbal and Irie Jones – ramp up the volume, pushing their parents to the limit as they challenge their ideas of home and identity.
It’s a big, loud, boisterous and fiercely clever book. Reading Zadie play with the multitudes of language on London’s streets, and explore identity, community and the competing pulls of nature and nurture, is an unforgettable experience. No wonder this book became the literary landmark for a generation.”
- Dua x
Make sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter for the full #MonthlyRead experience, and join the conversation on the @service95bookclub podcast – coming soon.
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