NW details the stories of 4 main characters (Leah Hanwell, Keisha/Natalie Blake, Nathan Bogle and Felix Cooper) over 5 chapters. The novel accentuates and presents contemporary issues faced mainly by individuals living in North West London. Zadie Smith, born in 1975 to a Jamaican mother and a British father, drew inspiration for writing this book largely from her own personal life growing up in North West London as a person of colour. NW is widely considered a contemporary novel due to its allusion to issues that are still relevant today, such as cultural globalization and identity politics. Moreover, the experimental style of formulating text and mixture of ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres exhibit characteristics of contemporary writing. These points will be further elaborated to delineate NW as a contemporary novel.
The chronology and content of the novel bears a strong closeness to reality, asserting NW as a contemporary novel (Szakolczai 1–8). NW was published in August 2012 (Smith), and many of the global events that were mentioned in the novel are still largely relevant today. For instance, when Annie asked Erik about his nation’s financial troubles (Smith 114), Smith was referring to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis that bankrupted all 3 of Iceland’s major commercial banks (Einarsson et al.). Until today, the effects of this crisis are still widely discussed on major news and social media. Another quote illustrates this relevancy to current affairs aptly: “Water shortage. Food wars. Strain A-H5N1. Manhattan slips into the sea. England freezes. Iran presses the button. A tornado blows through Kensal Rise.” The events mentioned in this quote all occurred in the 21st century, and most of them still pose an issue in the current global context (Saikal). Readers of this quote would immediately understand the background of each phrase since they have likely lived through it or felt secondary repercussions. Furthermore, the repeated inclusions of such historical events show the novel’s obsession with the past, which is a common trait of contemporary writing (Usborne).
The inner struggles of the main characters also embody the current issues of the contemporary world. Smith focuses on 2 main themes: cultural globalization and identity politics, that are still fiercely discussed today.
Smith eloquently incorporated the dynamics of cultural globalization by detailing the interactions among people of diverse cultural backgrounds. The novel realistically portrayed how ‘people of colour’ had to deal with social issues that white people historically have never experienced. This can be seen in page 153, where the Blake family watched “the white boys walk free from court” (Smith), absolved from the repercussions of murdering a black teenager at the Eltham bus stop. Smith was clearly referring to the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 (BBC). It exposed the injustice that black people in London faced as the perpetrators walked free from the first trial. These racial and cultural issues continue to be discussed today, evident from the “Black Lives Matter” movement in 2020 (Buchanan et al.). The inclusion of this scene also shows Smith’s use of interstitial fiction, a form of contemporary writing (Morrison 7). The Blake family is not a real family, but Smith ‘stitches’ fiction and non-fiction together, concluding with the boy being “buried in Marcia’s parish”.
Self-identification was similarly a strong theme in the novel. Historically, the issue of self-identity has never been as prominent an issue as it is today. The idea of individualism has posed a new challenge for people in the contemporary world: to choose what they want to do. The world’s transition from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity (Durkheim) has created this peculiar dilemma of seemingly infinite choices but also being bound by co-dependence. As Leah ponders the mantra “I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me” (Smith 10), the story shows that this is clearly not the case. For instance, she chose to let Shar into her house (12), but that resulted in her getting reprimanded by her mum and Michel for being gullible (19), and ultimately it led to her dog’s death (71). From this, it is apparent that the actions of others will influence the way she lives. Had she known her dog would have died from letting Shar in, she would not have done so. In this case, she was only one of the many ‘authors’ of her life. Additionally, the idea that she is in full control of her life can also be an illusion. This was expressed in the novel when Leah was dreaming about her father and thought that she could make him do what she wanted (44). However, the unfortunate reality was that she could not bring him back to life. This is reflected in society today as technology has seemingly provided more opportunities, but whether it has provided tangible improvements is debatable (Jacobsen).
With regards to the style of writing and the format of text, Smith tended towards experimentation of unorthodox textual features and inculcated a mixture of ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres. From a macro-perspective on the novel, the format of each part were neither standardized nor very systematic. The first VISITATION (9) had numbered chapters resembling conventional books, but GUEST (78) had extremely long chapters with only “NW6” or “(W1)” as the chapter titles. The next part, HOST (136), was also completely different, with 185 vignette chapters. CROSSING (232) then resembled a map guide, with places as the chapter titles, and the novel concluded with a very short VISITATION part (251). This format of writing resides predominantly in contemporary texts, due to its experimental nature (Bray et al. 435–451). This was also evident from the text within the chapters. In the first VISITATION part, Smith used text to form shapes that literally resembled the object that the text was describing. This could be seen in Chapter 7 (27), where she tried to ‘draw’ an apple tree with text, and in Chapter 8 (29), where the shape of a mouth was made with “tooth” and “TONGUE”. Smith also used varying ways to indicate speech, switching from hyphens (11) to quotation marks (79), to simply indenting each line (234). These examples further illustrate the experimental style of writing that is characteristic of contemporary works. NW also blended ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres throughout the text. This can be seen in Chapter 14 of the first VISITATION (46), when the text alludes to the ghosts of Jack Sheppard and Charles Dickens, both figures that would require a reader to possess a decent extent of background knowledge to know, roaming the streets of NW. Immediately in the next line, the ‘high’ genre pivots to a ‘low’ genre as someone spots a “knotted condom filled with sperm”. This style of intertwining genres aptly expresses the novel as a contemporary work.
In conclusion, the composition and content of the text in NW clearly shows that it is a contemporary novel. Although parts of the book can be seen to be influenced by the works of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce (Guignery 8), Zadie Smith clearly embraced a variety of genres to create something of her own. The relevance to the real, experimental features and fusion of ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature all contribute to the claim that NW is a contemporary novel.
Works Cited
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Buchanan, Larry, et al. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.
Durkheim, E. Division of Labour in Society. Macmillan, 1984.
Einarsson, Bjarni G, et al. The Long History of Financial Boom-Bust Cycles in Iceland, 30 Mar. 2015, www.sedlabanki.is/library/Skraarsafn/Malstofur/The-long-history-of-financial-boom-bust-cycles-in-Iceland-P1-Draft-version-30-March-2015.pdf.
Guignery, Vanessa. “Zadie Smith’s NW or the Art of Line-Crossing.” E-Rea, no. 11.2, 2014, p. 8., doi:10.4000/erea.3892.
“Information Design, Emergent Culture and Experimental Form in the Novel.” The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, by Joe Bray et al., Routledge, 2015, pp. 435–451.
Jacobsen, Katja Lindskov. “The Politics of Humanitarian Technology.” 2015, doi:10.4324/9781315777276.
Morrison, Jago. Contemporary Fiction. Routledge, 2003.
Saikal, Amin. “The Iran Nuclear Dispute.” Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 60, no. 2, 2006, pp. 193–199., doi:10.1080/10357710600696118.
Smith, Zadie. NW. Penguin Press, 2012.
Szakolczai Árpád. “Novels and The Problem of Reality.” Novels and the Sociology of the Contemporary, Routledge, Taylor Et Francis Group, 2016, pp. 1–8.
Usborne, Simon. “Stuck in the Past: Why Is Modern Literature Obsessed with History?” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 12 Apr. 2009, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/stuck-in-the-past-why-is-modern-literature-obsessed-with-history-1667709.html.
