Zadie Smith

An open letter on the New Statesman defending Rooney has been signed by dozens of star writers.

Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Naomi Klein, J.M. Kurtzi, Anne Carson, Colm Toybin, and so it goes on.

Later, we talk to the culture editor of the New Statesman.

But first...

Among those was, for instance, J.M. Coetzee.

I wrote to him and he replied very, very quickly.

Um, so, um, there was an enormous amount of enthusiasm from the literary world, as you can, you know, as you can see from the people who did sign up, you know, the likes of, you know, Zadie Smith and, uh, uh, Annie Urnau, another Nobel prize winner.

So, um, um, yeah, I mean, you know, it, it, it didn't actually take as long as you might think.

But at the end of the episode, of course, they all come back together and their friendship is sealed, even if where they're going to live is not.

The only thing you missed there, Dawn, is it's all narrated by Zadie Smith for some strange reason.

Oh yes, I

forgot that, yes.

Abby's episode was almost like a kitchen sink drama about this girl who'd come from Liverpool and pulled herself up from the bootstraps and wanted to be better than the girl she went to school with.

And if she was back in Liverpool, she'd be married now with kids.

That's what Zadie Smith tells us anyway.

Obviously, knowing Emily Fenn from her roles in, you know, in The Responder, and I believe she did Brokeback Mountain on the stage.

Um, I wanted writers, um, who, who had a certain credibility, uh, on, you know, on political and ethical issues, uh, among those, um, was for instance, JM could say, um, and, um, you know, I wrote to him and he replied, you know, very, very quickly.

So there was an enormous amount of enthusiasm from the literary world, as you can, you know, as you can see from the people who did sign up, you know, the likes of, you know, Zadie Smith and Annie Urnau, another Nobel Prize winner.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, it didn't actually take as long as you might think.

Well, congratulations on that.

Smart people do stupid things and vice versa.

I always remember something Zadie Smith said, where, you know, every time a homophobic politician is caught having... having some same-sex relationship in a bathroom at an airport or whatever everyone's surprised like when are we going to stop being surprised because people are a mess people are a complicated mess yet On social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama where everybody's either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain.

And we know that's not the truth.

So, you know, nuance has been dying for a long, long time.

So going over to England, you have that underneath your belt, and you're studying the PhD because you have a burning question.

Mine was on Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Historical Realism, and if the genre belongs to the author or the critic, because James Woods, the critic, was very unkind to Zadie Smith's book, and I thought unfairly so.

And so I discovered this, and I discovered this, and the writing process, and you start formulating.

And they have to do defenses.

This is three best friends from university living in London in their mid-twenties, and they face eviction from their landlord.

And And it's actually narrated by the writer Zadie Smith.

I'm sure we'll have sort of fans of Zadie listening.

But what did you make of this one?

I consider the first translation was, um, into a star.

And, um, yeah, It was, I mean, it's a bit insane that it was my first translation because it was published by Hamish Hamilton, which is like, you know, publishes Zadie Smith and ridiculously famous authors.

But I remember, so it was kind of a personal thing because I met Puk and I'd moved to Aarhus, this smaller city in Denmark, and we shared a co-working space, a lot of us, and I met her one night.

Um, and found out she was an author and then like got her book from the library and was just, I think, I mean, it's, it like completely broke my heart and wasn't, I think it's an amazing book, but also I guess having met her and having this like physical presence of a person who had written this, um, made me, made me really like want to do this for her in a way.