Which is all to say: White Teeth often finds itself rubbing shoulders with celebrities.Īnyway, Smith's novel is modern both in terms of its date of publication and the themes that fill its pages. It won the Whitbread Book Award for a first novel and, in 2005, it appeared on Time Magazine's list of 'All-Time 100 Novels.' This list included works written in English between 19, so some of the books, like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye, have been around for a whole lot longer than White Teeth (but are still completely awesome). White Teeth may not be a 'classic' quite yet, but this novel has been winning attention (and awards) since it impressed the pants off of people in 2000. Most of all, though, she surprised herself: 'I think a surprise which will last me my whole life,' she said in this interview. She surprised pretty much everyone with it, from journalists to book reviewers to literary critics.

Given Smith's age and lack of noteriety when she published White Teeth, she certainly didn't expect for the thing to get so darn popular. So, you know, we guess you should consider that the next time you're eating pizza and cruising Facebook between cramming for your exams.

Supposedly, she wrote it during breaks from studying for her finals. The novel was released not long after Smith graduated from the University of Cambridge. You know how when you watch the Olympics, you realize that there are people out there winning gold medals at the age of fourteen? And then you start to feel a little bad about binge watching several seasons of television per week? Well, Zadie Smith wrote White Teethwhen she was twenty-four.

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