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  • Published: 27 November 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241989166
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $22.99

On Beauty




The bestselling, Booker shortlisted novel by one of Britain's greatest living novelists, now a Penguin Essential

Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful?

Set between New England and London, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kipps - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kipps, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.

  • Published: 27 November 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241989166
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, Swing Time and The Fraud; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; four collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free, Intimations and Dead and Alive; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives.

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Praise for On Beauty

The tale of a mixed-race British American family in conflict with another family of opposing sensibilities. As with all Smith's work, it's smart, funny and a masterclass in the complexities of identity

Luan Goldie, Guardian

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